The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [188]
That logic led to an aggressive American internationalism in which Guillion argued that “we should throw our weight between French and Vietnam in order to encourage support for war.” Another observer told Jack, “Asians feel that the West has always meant imperialism under the strongest power and in the present case it is U.S. U.S. must try to achieve our aims but not expect to be well liked doing so.”
Time and again Jack was told that the French were defending a colonial regime. (“Last year best year in business in history. Made almost as much as war cost them economically.”) Time and again he was reminded of the determination of Ho’s forces, and of the corruption of the French regime. Time and again too he heard the melancholy logic of the domino theory: if the French lost northern Vietnam, the “country probably would be lost—Burma would go—Malaya would be in a bad way and our entire position in South East Asia would collapse.”
Jack and Bobby flew over the battlefields in the North where the French Foreign Legion was battling against the forces of Ho Chi Minh. In the besieged city of Hanoi, a visit from an American congressman merited a parade. Along the road the children of the city stood waving flags.
Jack admired General de Lattre de Tassigny, the haughty French general, for he admired courage and de Lattre was not lacking in that quality. Jack and Bobby had been brought up to believe that each man stood on a road with a direction sign pointing to courage in one direction and cowardice in another. The road that the two brothers were traveling in Vietnam, however, was not so clearly marked. The signposts were obscure, written at times in strange languages. Moreover, courage was a dangerous virtue when it was not tethered to the mind and the spirit.
De Lattre was a brave man, but he was fighting what appeared to be a doomed conflict, and any admiration of the general had to be tempered by that reality. The French tragedy, as Jack could not help but see, could easily become an American tragedy. One minister shared with Jack his observation “that French realize that now [there’s] no hope of retaining old hold on country, now [they are] only fighting to prevent Tunisia and Morocco from feeling they can break away … so there is danger that French may drop it into our laps.”
Bobby did not so readily understand that compromise and cowardice were not synonyms. Bobby sought to emulate his brother, but often when Jack painted in subtle strokes, Bobby splattered the canvas with a few bold strokes. Jack’s diary reads like a foreign correspondent’s notebook, listening and learning before he makes his own judgments. Bobby’s diary is full of quick judgments and caustic asides.
In Japan toward the end of the trip, Jack fell critically ill, his temperature rising to a dramatic 106 degrees. Bobby arranged to fly his brother to a military hospital on Okinawa. “And everybody there just expected that he’d die,” Bobby recalled. Bobby was there for his brother’s deathwatch, and he knew that death was not some distant unmet stranger but a companion his brother might meet at any turn. No one could know how sick Jack had been.
When Jack returned to the United States, he spent time secreted in Virginia. His office staff was used to Jack’s mysterious periodical disappearances and knew that his absence meant that once again he was sick. “He’d be in the hospital quite a bit, and he didn’t want the reporters to know he was up here, because they’d put it in the paper,” recalled Grace Burke, his Boston secretary.
When Jack recuperated, he gave a nationwide address on the Mutual Broadcasting Network. Most politicians learn not to stray too far beyond the safe confines of sloganeering and cliché, especially if they are contemplating running for the Senate in a