Bear Any Burden

What if Kennedy back-tracked on Vietnam, unprepared to "Bear any burden, pay any price?", asks Steve Payne

Author says: on October 11th, 1963 President John F. Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, ordering the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963. His successor President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately reversed the order with his own NSAM 273 on November 26, 1963. But for a moment lets imagine that the American personnel were operating a rather different engagement plan prior to their planned withdrawal...

In 1963, on this day in the Oval Office US President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110. Accordingly the force of law was given to the planned withdrawal of all American personnel absolutely no later than the end of 1965.

Because unmistakeably, just four months after a Vietnamese Buddhist by the name of Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire in a Saigon street (pictured, left), the security situation in the country was rapidly deteriorating.

In so doing, the Kennedy brothers were backtracking big-time on a key inauguration pledge to "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge - and more".

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge - and more"

Yet two other Catholic brothers had even more reason to regret listening to those warm words, the Vietnamese Dictator Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. Because on the celebration of Buddha's 2,527 birthday on May 8th, the Diem Regime had ordered the Catholic deputy in Hue to prevent the Buddhists from flying their own flag. A wave of religious intolerance swept the country. And just about the last thing South Vietnam needed right now was a religious feud, and so a group of generals led by Doung Van Minh and Tran Van Don overthrew the Diem regime and executed the brothers and their sister-in-law, the anti-Buddhist "dragon lady" Madame Nhu.

The secretly US-financed Nationalist Chinese Armies who had sustained Diem in power since 1962 also evacuated the country. Those departing soldiers had been resettled by the French in 1950 in what was then Chochin China and expanded over time by local recruitment. Commander R. Sargent Shriver was the last American out of Saigon. He told the evacuating Embassy staff (pictured, right) that it was a matter of deep regret that the Peace Corps had been unable to complete their mission in Vietnam.

Author says, please note that extensive amounts of content have been repurposed from both the source articles comprising Wikipedia and "the Vietnam War for Dummies" by Frankum and Maxner.

Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items explore that possibility. Possibilities such as America becoming a Marxist superpower, aliens influencing human history in the 18th century and Teddy Roosevelt winning his 3rd term as president abound in this interesting fictional blog.