Remembering Robert Kennedy Forty Years Later

[SallyOdriscoll (imported)]

Two years ago I finished a coursework Master in Political Science....in the final semester I took "Political History of the United States of America in the 20th Century"...It was not an exceptionally popular subject and there were only 14 of us crowded uncomfortably into a little tutorial room. Our Lecturer was extremely cynical and sarcastic - scary and sharp witted - a man who was about to retire at the end of the year.....anyway by the end of the first session we had been assigned the task of choosing some historical event in 20th Century where the USA changed the world....(It should be interesting to note at this point that nobody chose the Vietnam War)....to our horror we had limited time to get it all together and produce a 10000 word assignment , a one and a half hour presentation plus understand it well enough to fend off another hour of heated discussion (of which we were also supposed to take part in)...To set the standard to which he expected us to reach, our Lecturer took the first alloted presentation time and to our astonishment he started talking about himself in '60s as student on a study scholarship over in USA. He held our attention and we got to see what it meant to be passionate about your politcal and social beliefs...he believed and became involved in Robert Kennedys campaign...he talked about the assassination and the loss...how he threw in his studies and went home...it was a lesson on the enormous amount of effort to surmount your own fears and repercussions if those opportunities are torn away...

[Blaise (imported)]

Two years ago I finished a coursework Master in Political Science....in the final semester I took "Political History of the United States of America in the 20th Century"...It was not an exceptionally popular subject and there were only 14 of us crowded uncomfortably into a little tutorial room. Our Lecturer was extremely cynical and sarcastic - scary and sharp witted - a man who was about to retire at the end of the year.....anyway by the end of the first session we had been assigned the task of choosing some historical event in 20th Century where the USA changed the world....(It should be interesting to note at this point that nobody chose the Vietnam War)....to our horror we had limited time to get it all together and produce a 10000 word assignment , a one and a half hour presentation plus understand it well enough to fend off another hour of heated discussion (of which we were also supposed to take part in)...To set the standard to which he expected us to reach, our Lecturer took the first allotted presentation time and to our astonishment he started talking about himself in '60s as student on a study scholarship over in USA. He held our attention and we got to see what it meant to be passionate about your political and social beliefs...he believed and became involved in Robert Kennedy’s campaign...he talked about the assassination and the loss...how he threw in his studies and went home...it was a lesson on the enormous amount of effort to surmount your own fears and repercussions if those opportunities are torn away...

Many commentators complain that too many people in the United States believed that the United States and its ally the Government of South Vietnam lost Tet Mau Than . In fact, the United States and its ally deterred the offensive and effectively destroyed a major part of indigenous resistance to the Americans and their allies. This criticism became a very important base for blaming various media for our ultimate loss of the war.

Don Oberdorfer made that case in his excellent book Tet: The Turning Point in the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, the successful resistance to the Ted Offensive is beside the point. It has little, if anything, to do with the bankruptcy of the American and South Vietnamese strategy.

Senator Robert Kennedy entered the presidential campaign at the time citizens slowly became aware that the campaign had not progressed as well as General Westmoreland and other claimed it had.

The United States could put off defeat in Viet Nam. However, many of us thought that without resorting to drastic methods beyond moral comprehension, the United States could not win the war. The knowledgeable commentator and administrator of the Phoenix Program argued otherwise. He thought that the Phoenix Program worked. The debate rages still. I am willing to consider what he says, but I believe that the generals on ground in Viet Nam probably thought General Westmoreland was delusional. The generals planned and execuated campaigns taht they knew would not solve the problem.

Senator Kennedy entered the presidential campaign after the Tet Offensive and when the pubic seemed open to reflecting on alternatives to our strategy. Senator Kennedy seemed to be one of few if any people who might have turned us around on Viet Nam. I am not certain that he had any idea what to do. Even had he been elected, he would have had to deal with some of the same issues that confronted President Nixon. I think that we had more hope than reason to hope when Senator Kennedy ran for president.

I had thrown in my studies nine days before Senator Kennedy announced he was running. He did hit a note that I heard.