this country and the world with his historical writings. But he does have some blind spots, and ignores or misinterprets some things, especially those that involve mixed motives among US leaders, or US leaders in transition--people, like both RFK and JFK--who are open-minded and big-hearted enough to have evolving views, views that become more enlightened over time. For instance, it would be easy to paint RFK as an "anti-communist" crusader, given his early history; yet he completely changed his mind about the Vietnam War (and also about our bloody interference in South America) and became an eloquent spokesman against the Vietnam War, and a leading presidential candidate--and would have won, had he not been assassinated.
JFK was taken out much earlier in the Vietnam horror (five years earlier). There is evidence that he signed executive orders withdrawing US military advisers just before he was killed, and was entirely re-thinking that policy. JFK was a huge admirer of Thomas Jefferson and I doubt that it could have escaped his attention that Ho Chi Minh cited Thomas Jefferson in his pleading letters to the US to support Vietnamese elections and self-determination. The OTHER important thing that JFK did was to REFUSE to invade Cuba, despite intense pressure from the CIA and the military establishment to do so. These two things--his re-thinking Vietnam policy and his refusal to invade Cuba--are, in my opinion, what got him killed.
JFK, like RFK, started off as a post-WW II cold warrior. But when you read JFK's speeches and review his actions, you see an unmistakable evolution in his thinking. He very clearly was trying to form a more positive vision of the future, one in which world peace and positive human development could take place. And his brother continued that evolution, after JFK's death--almost as if they were one mind. (They were very close as brothers.) JFK had only three years in office before he was assassinated. He had inherited the Cold War and all of its policies, including the CIA plan for invasion of Cuba, which was sprung on him shortly after his inauguration. It was already in motion, and could not be stopped (or the people involved WOULD NOT stop it). He denied USAF air support, and the plan failed--creating great anger against him within the rightwing Cuban Florida exile community, and within our own secret government. When Cuba made the foolish mistake of permitting Soviet Russia to begin installing missile silos in Cuba, the US rightwing felt vindicated, and JFK found himself staring at a potential nuclear holocaust. Only God knows how it was prevented. But the upshot was JFK's determination to rid the world of nuclear weapons and the first step toward that end, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, of which he had said, a couple of years earlier (when the Treaty was first proposed):
"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
"Men no longer debate whether armaments are a symptom or a cause of tension. The mere existence of modern weapons--ten million times more powerful than any that the world has ever seen, and only minutes away from any target on earth--is a source of horror, and discord and distrust. Men no longer maintain that disarmament must await the settlement of all disputes--for disarmament must be a part of any permanent settlement. And men may no longer pretend that the quest for disarmament is a sign of weakness--for in a spiraling arms race, a nation's security may well be shrinking even as its arms increase."
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2003/11/17_carnegie_jfk-nuclear.htmJFK thus earned the hostility of the weapons industry and the war profiteers--on top of his refusal to make war on Cuba, and his evolving position against interference in Vietnam.
The next thing that came along, with which he and the secret government disagreed, was the civil rights movement. He and RFK defied that establishment and jumped in on the side of the Martin Luther King and the black civil and voting rights movement--in outright opposition to J. Edgar Hoover (FBI) and other fascists and bigots within the government, including the very powerful white Southern Democratic Senators and House members (who were also involved in porkbarrel military contracts and bases).
You see the gathering storm--and the danger to the establishment of a man of conscience, a man of good heart and an open mind--in a position of power. Howard Zinn hates and despises that power. I don't disagree with him. The US government and the President who sits on top of it are TOO powerful--they were then, and they are now. And that powermongering is structural, present from the beginning, as Zinn so eloquently points out (for instance, a democratic revolution that permitted slavery). But JFK was an Irishman, from a tradition of thousands of years of rebellion, and a Catholic, a religion that was despised by the rich white establishment as late as 1960 when he ran for president. (I remember the foul anti-Catholic pamphlets about JFK.) I see a man torn--a man evolving--a man trying to see and reach for the Light. And a man who was cut down BECAUSE of those qualities. Who knows where he might have evolved TO?
Zinn is a bit too cold-eyed for me. He doesn't understand why, throughout the South and in many parts of poor America, THREE portraits grace the hovels of the poorest of the poor: those of Martin Luther King, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Yeah, JFK and RFK were pretty much OF the establishment (despite their Irish blood), but they were something special as well: powerful men who were capable of change, and who could see things from the point of view of the oppressed, and from the point of view of all humanity.
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