Compare And Contrast Schweikart And Allen So Critical Of Jfk

Why are Schweikart and Allen so critical of JFK? What do they claim were Kennedy’s main failings as a person and political leader? Do you think this is a fair interpretation? Why or why not? Schweikart and Allen claim Kennedy failed in many areas, most notably how he handled Cuba and Vietnam. They criticize the Bay of Pigs incident, in which he suddenly withdrew support from Cuban exiles rebelling against Castro (Schweikart and Allen 699-700). In addition, Schweikart and Allen also say that “when, after the disastrous decade-long Vietnam War resulted in public criticism and assignment of responsibility, Kennedy should have been at the top of the blame list” (Schweikart and Allen 705). However, this is not a fair interpretation of Kennedy,
joined the Vietnam War because they were afraid of what was known as the “domino effect” (Schweikart and Allen 704). However, the U.S. became stuck once they were fully committed and the war dragged on due to poor decisions. Zinn also mentions the domino effect: “like a row of dominoes, if one country fell to Communism, the next one would do the same and so on. It was important therefore to keep the first one from falling” (Zinn 471). In addition, America became involved extremely quickly because Eisenhower and Kennedy sent thousands of military advisors to Vietnam when the U.S. was only permitted to have 685 advisors (Zinn 474). While Schweikart, Allen, Zinn agree on the reasons for U.S. involvement in the war, they disagree on the reasons for the anti-war movement. Schweikart and Allen explain that it started because the U.S. government made no attempt to portray their enemy negatively and “at no time did the administration launch even the most basic education campaign to explain the communists’ objectives to the American people” (Schweikart and Allen 718-719). Moreover, Schweikart and Zinn clarify that there were two main groups of Americans: doves, who opposed the war, and hawks, who supported it. However, Zinn traces the citizen’s disapproval of the war to the fact that many Americans had died in the war (Zinn 483), and ignores the people who supported the war, calling the time period “the greatest antiwar movement the nation
On the other hand, Schweikart and Allen characterize Nixon’s resignation as the only option when he could not find support (Schweikart and Allen 749). The significance of this view is it shows how many people hated Nixon, but Zinn portrays it as justified while Schweikart and Zinn portray it as unfair.

Does Zinn think corruption was rooted out of government through congressional investigations during the Watergate affair? Zinn believes even after the Watergate scandal ended, corruption in the government still remained. He quotes a French newspaper: “the elimination of Mr. Richard Nixon leaves intact all the mechanisms and all the face values which permitted the Watergate scandal” (Zinn 545). He explains that the House Committee blamed Nixon’s faults personally, but not the corruption in the government which enabled the scandal. Therefore, the power of the President to take any action preserving national security and to keep communications confidential remained (Zinn