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Last week when NBC anchor Brian Williams reported from Afghanistan, he twice (here and here) equated US military outreach efforts to the civilian population with the flawed hearts-&-minds approach during the Vietnam War. Now that Williams is back in New York he pursued the Vietnam analogy with NBC's in-house historian Michael Beschloss. Beschloss obtained audiotapes of John Kennedy discussing South Vietnam in 1963. JFK was plotting the CIA's coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem. He thought Diem's regime was "so corrupt and autocratic that they would really undermine the American war effort," Beschloss explained. JFK wanted the coup to result in exile but it ended in assassination instead: "No one likes anybody killed but I mean…we have lost hundreds in Vietnam," the President shrugged.
Historian Beschloss concluded: "What we would not give to be able to hear tapes of President Obama, right now, having similar conversations--not about a coup against President Karzai--but about what we do…"
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