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anitaashland's review
4.0
Because the author is running for President I wanted to learn more by reading this book.
I have read many books about the Kennedy family over the years and enjoyed this book a lot because it has chapters on his grandparents, JFK, his father Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s BFF Lem Billings, and the final chapter devoted to his mother Ethel and why there was a rift in their relationship and how he eventually healed the rift. I learned a bit about the author RFK Jr along the way but the focus is on his family.
I have read many books about the Kennedy family over the years and enjoyed this book a lot because it has chapters on his grandparents, JFK, his father Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s BFF Lem Billings, and the final chapter devoted to his mother Ethel and why there was a rift in their relationship and how he eventually healed the rift. I learned a bit about the author RFK Jr along the way but the focus is on his family.
socraticgadfly's review
1.0
This may be the most mendacious book I've ever read. (Now, I don't read true wingnuts' political books, and I do no more than grok conspiracy theory ones, so, I've cut some avenues off. Still.)
I'm going to start with and focus on Vietnam and Dallas, given that they are the center of the Camelot mythos, which is itself bullshit, and then to Cuba.
(Some of this comes from an actually very good new bio of Bobby, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon.)
First, Dallas. Without directly saying he believes in a conspiracy (why not, Robert, after that loony antivaxxer screed you wrote a decade ago), he clearly does. He mentions CIA connections in Dallas being plenty (there's a subset of CIA conspiracy theories around Mayor Cabell and his brother, the military-industrial complex in Dallas being plenty, the Klan and racism, and throws in mob angles, too.
Well, Junior Boy? The CIA recruited from early on heavily at Ivy League schools. You know, the ones in New England, including near Boston. Military industrial complex? Raytheon, General Electric and plenty of other folks in Boston today and their predecessors were there 50-60 years ago. Maybe the Klan didn't march in Boston, but racism? Ask Bill Russell about some of your fellow Boston Irish Catholics. Or look for an anti-Semitic bone or two in your old granddad with his "sheenies" and "kikes" comments. The mob? Boston was and is plenty mobbed up. And with Irish, not Italians. Whitey Bulger, anybody? Or some of your grandpa's anti-Semitic comments
That's finis to that smear job on Dallas.
Nam? Bobby claims the old claim that Jack would have withdrawn by the end of 1965.
Nope. First, as Rick Perlstein, Noam Chomsky and others have noted, that claim was aspirational only. And, if necessary to get your dad elected in 1968, had Jack been alive and in office (his poll numbers were sinking throughout 1963), he would have sent new troops over.
Second, how does Jack's known infatuation with Special Forces/Green Berets square with his absolute peace-loving.
Third, he's very publicly on record as late as August 1963 in articulating his belief in the domino theory, including worrying about more dominoes falling on his watch.
Bobby said the same in 1962, telling press in Saigon:
"We are going to win in Vietnam. We will remain here until we do win."
Then, there's the even bigger lies of RFK Jr about who we were fighting.
Page 324, he claims the North Vietnamese Army had 20,000 troops in South Vietnam in 1968, supplemented by a "few thousand" Viet Cong. He uses this claim to justify how bad South Vietnam was. Reality? NVA had 130K at Tet along with 160K VC. Overall in 1968, NVA + VC had 400K troops in South Vietnam.
So, Bobby Jr has lied by a factor of 20-fold, or else allowed himself to be misinformed by a factor of 20-fold.
The reality is that the Pentagon was talking about war expansion possibilities at the time Jack was shot. How much of the details Jack knew, we don't know, but he surely knew the general outlines. When LBJ got his Tonkin Gulf green light, he had those expansion plans all at the ready.
But there's other mendacity here.
Ditto for Jack's knowledge of Operation Mongoose against Castro. He didn't know, and didn't want to know, and didn't need to know, details of every CIA plot against Fidel. But the idea? And that it was being developed. Of course he knew. And Bobby was totally hands on, but Bobby Jr. doesn't discuss this at all.
Bobby also speculated about the U.S. committing a false flag event at Guantanamo, as an excuse to invade Cuba.
Speaking of ... At the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby was a hawk — enough of a hawk to be willing to support an invasion. Later, in his "Thirteen Days" book, he overrated McNamara (ignoring that Mac also supported invasion at the start) and totally dissed Dean Rusk to the point of mendacity at the level of his son in this book. The JFK White House tapes also reveal that Bobby was continuing to look at Mongoose stuff before and after the Missile Crisis. His actions afterword violated at least the spirit, if not the letter, of the no-invasion pledge to Khrushchev.
Bobby Jr., in cases like this, where there's too much public info that he and other Camelot mythicists can't explain away, just try to talk around it.
Ditto on LBJ. He can't totally slime him, so he slimes Dallas and tries to claim the Vietnam War was being fought against minimal opposition, even though that, too, is publicly refutable. He undercounts LBJ's activity in the ExComm during the Missile Crisis, and also doesn't tell us that LBJ never knew about the "Trollope option," the pulling of US missiles from Turkey. Had Johnson known this, he might have been less hawkish on Nam, thinking that Jack had been that nuanced and compromising on Cuba.
And, I haven't even mentioned other things about the "peace-loving" Jack that Bobby Jr. omitted, like him lying about a missile gap he knew didn't exist.
Basically, it seems like Junior Boy's stance is that he figures he can throw whatever he wants at a wall and get away with it on Camelot true believers accepting it.
I'm going to start with and focus on Vietnam and Dallas, given that they are the center of the Camelot mythos, which is itself bullshit, and then to Cuba.
(Some of this comes from an actually very good new bio of Bobby, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon.)
First, Dallas. Without directly saying he believes in a conspiracy (why not, Robert, after that loony antivaxxer screed you wrote a decade ago), he clearly does. He mentions CIA connections in Dallas being plenty (there's a subset of CIA conspiracy theories around Mayor Cabell and his brother, the military-industrial complex in Dallas being plenty, the Klan and racism, and throws in mob angles, too.
Well, Junior Boy? The CIA recruited from early on heavily at Ivy League schools. You know, the ones in New England, including near Boston. Military industrial complex? Raytheon, General Electric and plenty of other folks in Boston today and their predecessors were there 50-60 years ago. Maybe the Klan didn't march in Boston, but racism? Ask Bill Russell about some of your fellow Boston Irish Catholics. Or look for an anti-Semitic bone or two in your old granddad with his "sheenies" and "kikes" comments. The mob? Boston was and is plenty mobbed up. And with Irish, not Italians. Whitey Bulger, anybody? Or some of your grandpa's anti-Semitic comments
That's finis to that smear job on Dallas.
Nam? Bobby claims the old claim that Jack would have withdrawn by the end of 1965.
Nope. First, as Rick Perlstein, Noam Chomsky and others have noted, that claim was aspirational only. And, if necessary to get your dad elected in 1968, had Jack been alive and in office (his poll numbers were sinking throughout 1963), he would have sent new troops over.
Second, how does Jack's known infatuation with Special Forces/Green Berets square with his absolute peace-loving.
Third, he's very publicly on record as late as August 1963 in articulating his belief in the domino theory, including worrying about more dominoes falling on his watch.
Bobby said the same in 1962, telling press in Saigon:
"We are going to win in Vietnam. We will remain here until we do win."
Then, there's the even bigger lies of RFK Jr about who we were fighting.
Page 324, he claims the North Vietnamese Army had 20,000 troops in South Vietnam in 1968, supplemented by a "few thousand" Viet Cong. He uses this claim to justify how bad South Vietnam was. Reality? NVA had 130K at Tet along with 160K VC. Overall in 1968, NVA + VC had 400K troops in South Vietnam.
So, Bobby Jr has lied by a factor of 20-fold, or else allowed himself to be misinformed by a factor of 20-fold.
The reality is that the Pentagon was talking about war expansion possibilities at the time Jack was shot. How much of the details Jack knew, we don't know, but he surely knew the general outlines. When LBJ got his Tonkin Gulf green light, he had those expansion plans all at the ready.
But there's other mendacity here.
Ditto for Jack's knowledge of Operation Mongoose against Castro. He didn't know, and didn't want to know, and didn't need to know, details of every CIA plot against Fidel. But the idea? And that it was being developed. Of course he knew. And Bobby was totally hands on, but Bobby Jr. doesn't discuss this at all.
Bobby also speculated about the U.S. committing a false flag event at Guantanamo, as an excuse to invade Cuba.
Speaking of ... At the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby was a hawk — enough of a hawk to be willing to support an invasion. Later, in his "Thirteen Days" book, he overrated McNamara (ignoring that Mac also supported invasion at the start) and totally dissed Dean Rusk to the point of mendacity at the level of his son in this book. The JFK White House tapes also reveal that Bobby was continuing to look at Mongoose stuff before and after the Missile Crisis. His actions afterword violated at least the spirit, if not the letter, of the no-invasion pledge to Khrushchev.
Bobby Jr., in cases like this, where there's too much public info that he and other Camelot mythicists can't explain away, just try to talk around it.
Ditto on LBJ. He can't totally slime him, so he slimes Dallas and tries to claim the Vietnam War was being fought against minimal opposition, even though that, too, is publicly refutable. He undercounts LBJ's activity in the ExComm during the Missile Crisis, and also doesn't tell us that LBJ never knew about the "Trollope option," the pulling of US missiles from Turkey. Had Johnson known this, he might have been less hawkish on Nam, thinking that Jack had been that nuanced and compromising on Cuba.
And, I haven't even mentioned other things about the "peace-loving" Jack that Bobby Jr. omitted, like him lying about a missile gap he knew didn't exist.
Basically, it seems like Junior Boy's stance is that he figures he can throw whatever he wants at a wall and get away with it on Camelot true believers accepting it.
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