By Jesse Ventura
Although the connections between Vietnam and the assassination of John F. Kennedy are just starting to become recognized, Colonel Fletcher Prouty began writing about the links in the 1970s. This book, published after Oliver Stone’s 1991 film of the same name, gives details to the notion that an extremely powerful group wanted to remove JFK from the presidency in order to control policy and the direction of the government for the next eight, ten, twelve years, and more
JFK’s National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 called for the total withdrawal of not only U.S. troops, but all U.S. personnel, from Vietnam by 1965. What Col. Prouty has written gives a behind the scenes look at what was really going on and at JFK’s understanding that Vietnam would be a disaster. With Iraq and Afghanistan, we see history is repeating itself.
To appreciate the big money involvement that was in place to keep a war economy going, Prouty provides an understanding of the connection between the Military-Industrial Complex and banking.
Col. Prouty describes the pervasive groupthink belief that small winless wars were all that was possible to conduct in the nuclear weapons age. He explains this in terms of the military’s realization that large, full-scale war—total war—could no longer be fought after the advent of the hydrogen bomb. He also provides insight to the relatively recent idea of so-called Stateless Terrorism—in lieu of a real adversary an imagined enemy will always need to be invented.
In Vietnam, there was no objective and no real city to conquer in order to declare the war over. Prouty underscores that if Hanoi was ever captured, this would have prompted China to directly enter the conflict. Given this constraint, the city was denied to American Generals making war plans. If you can’t take the enemy’s capital how do you know when you’ve won? To understand the military mindset and the idea of a self-made role of the military you need to read this book.
The idea of false flag operations is new to most people, but not to the military. A case in point is Operation Northwoods, which discussed the use of covert actions—including attacks on American cities, ships, and people—to create a pretext to launch an assault on Cuba. Such proposals confront one with the reality of a corrupting influence unimaginable to most: that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would create plans to attack their own people to justify their existence.
Col. Prouty’s contribution comes from his work in the Pentagon and his common sense view that someone needed to level the playing field—to let the public know that military spending and goals are completely unrealistic
Few, if any, explain how over one million Tonkinese refugees of the north were moved to the south by the Dulles brothers to set the stage for a civil war that the United States would be called to help resolve. Some of the worst fighting was in the Mekong delta. The problem was that no one knew where Vietnam even was, let alone its history or its area.
It’s as if they said Canada was invading the United States but the worst fighting broke out in Florida. The whole thing was a set-up job. Another war with nowhere to go to win. Think about it—how could the Vietminh prevail over the U.S. Air Force, the 7thFleet, U2 spy planes, B52 bombing campaigns, five thousand helicopters, and, at one time, five hundred and fifty thousand troops? These beggars in black pajamas raised their flag over Saigon. Something is really wrong with the picture, unless you understand there never was a “Grand Strategy.”
We have to learn from the past and Col. Prouty is one of the few who explain the uncomfortable truth. This uncomfortable feeling goes on today. How do we know when we’ve won in Iraq or Afghanistan? Will this repeat in Iran and North Korea? What is the next military action that will be another unwinnable war designed to keep the Defense Department in business despite the astronomical costs as it bankrupts the nation?
To underscore Vietnam’s significance to the removal of JFK, the first document LBJ signed was NSAM 273 in which he reversed policy and now instructed his Generals to help the South Vietnamese “to win” their conflict with the north. President Kennedy had been urged many times by his military commanders to commit the United States to victory in Vietnam by including such words in U.S. policy papers and official pronouncements. Kennedy had adamantly refused to tie the United States into such a straitjacket.
Prouty’s explanation of the Saigon Military Mission—that it was not military and not a mission—is worth the price of the book alone. It was a CIA operation. The whole war was a CIA invention and this has to be understood first to keep it from happening again. Or again, we will find ourselves at war with another country with weapons of mass destruction that never can be found . . .
It’s time that everyone examine what Col. Fletcher Prouty wrote as a warning of what was really going on as opposed to what was reported regarding the Vietnam war and the removal of John F. Kennedy.