Executive
The Peace Speech plus 60 years
Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy called for peace – and the military industrial complex didn’t want peace. Observe the results.
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 23rd day of June in the year of our Lord 2023. I will be talking about the 60th anniversary of President John Kennedy’s speech given at American University, June 10th, 1963. In that moment he made a dramatic call for peace. I argue that the speech was a watershed moment in American politics and foreign policy because the organization in control of those things hated and feared peace as much in 1963 as it does now.
So what peace did JFK seek?
What was President Kennedy trying to do? What kind of peace did he seek—he tells us.
Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
I speak of peace as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war—and frequently the words of the pursuer of peace fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.
Weird as it may seem, the desire for peace put the Kennedys, Jack, and Bobby, at war with the most powerful force on this earth. President Eisenhower, who knew a thing or two about war, warned the American people about it in his farewell speech in 1961, and one must assume that he personally warned President Kennedy about what he was facing. The force was what Eisenhower referred to as the military industrial complex. We today might refer to it as the military, security, intelligence, industrial complex.
Kennedy’s pursuit of peace, which the media often referred to as Camelot, came to a quick end, almost before it could get started. On October 11, 1963, just four months after the speech President Kennedy apparently, according to biographers and to his brother Bobby, bypassed his own National Security Council and issued National Security Memorandum 263, ordering the withdrawal of the 1000 US military advisors from Vietnam by the end of 1963. His plan was not allowed to happen, because just 6 weeks later he was dead. And the first act of LBJ after taking the oath of office was to countermand Kennedy’s memorandum.
The world then and now
Dr. Ron Paul, in his article “We Need a Peace President,” commends Kennedy’s diplomacy during the Cuban Missile Crises.
Fortunately, we had a president in the White House at the time who understood the dangers of nuclear brinksmanship. Even though he was surrounded by hawks who could never forgive him for aborting the idiotic Bay of Pigs Cuba invasion, President John F. Kennedy picked up the telephone for a discussion with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, which eventually saved the world.
Yes, we know today that Kennedy made a deal with Khrushchev to remove US missiles from Northern Turkey which were right across the Black Sea and visible to Russia on a clear day and Khrushchev removed the Russian missiles from Cuba. Perhaps still today the most clear and shining example of how diplomacy can work if used properly. It is all too clear that we do not have a John Kennedy in the White House today to stop us from taking an unnecessarily confrontational tone towards Russia.
The world was different in 1963 and the United States was different. We were young and had just come from victory in a world war; there was nothing we could not accomplish. John Kennedy, a genuine war hero in the White House, knew just how powerful the organization which opposed him could be. When President Kennedy was assassinated, I would surmise that the military industrial complex assumed that a pivot had been reached in American history. Camelot was dead and had learned its lesson about who runs the world. LBJ was fully in their camp as the roughly 60,000 Vietnam dead would soon attest.
The assassination of Bobby Kennedy
Then out of the US Senate came Jack’s brother Bobby saying the same things, promising peace, and a way to make government work for all Americans. Both Kennedys thought they could be the force behind creating a good country for everyone. They sought to make the idea of America come alive for all Americans. Then, on June 5th, 1968, the most powerful industry in the world took control of American politics and foreign policy. It has held control since then.
The empire took control and developed a life of its own. It is fashionable today to call it the deep state. But by whatever name, it has now been in control of American politics, and especially foreign policy for 60 years. The idea of America was perhaps a government that practiced restraint and only fought when it had to. It did not seek to finance no-win wars through debt and inflation, thus condemning future generations. It kept taxes low and respected its people and tried to keep casualties from its foreign adventures low.
Peace and endless war – two competing visions
The assassination of Jack Kennedy put all that in the deep freeze at least temporarily. LBJ sold a different bill of goods to the American people. We could and should go abroad looking for monsters to slay, and confront them militarily wherever we found them. Yes, LBJ had a different plan and it was one of action, activism, and empire. Bombs, bullets, ships, and planes became the order of the day and they still are. A nation so bold and so powerful cannot be held in check by something as simple as a written constitution. Friends and enemies alike must get out of the way in an ever-expanding lust for greatness. Some among the new empire declared this to be a new American century.
Bobby Kennedy, young but solidly entrenched in the US senate, saw all this, and was disturbed by it. He was disturbed by the war, the tens of thousands of dead, the billions expended and all the other trappings of empire. He talked to people who urged him to take an unprecedented action, and that was to take on and oppose a sitting president from his own party in the primaries for the office of President of the United States. Bobby had some experience taking on an organization similar to the military industrial complex. Because his primary mission as attorney general had been to take on and reign in organized crime.
How RFK riled the mafia
The mafia was everywhere corrupting the system of justice by influencing witnesses and bribing or assassinating judges. He started to put them out of business by shining a light on their dark families through a series of Senate hearings. They didn’t forget his action and the rumor is that they will never forget. Supposedly, they had helped Jack win in the vitally important district of Chicago. They had been promised that the Kennedys would lay off them as a quid pro quo. If that happened Bobby apparently didn’t get the memo because he didn’t back away for a minute. Remember that Bobby Kennedy was attorney general and served at the pleasure of the president. If he were to be eliminated the president could simply appoint another. But if the president were eliminated, you had the whole system.
So, the business of the mob was being damaged by the efforts of Bobby Kennedy to actually do his job. But that was not the only industry and perhaps not even the most powerful industry upset with the Kennedys. The Kennedys had a general distrust of the war industry after the CIA lied to President Kennedy about the Bay of Pigs and neither ever forgot it. Apparently, according to many biographies, and the investigation of prosecutor Jim Garrison, by this time the mob and the CIA were working together to accomplish joint enterprises.
Killing RFK was bigger than killing JFK
Whether any of that information about the CIA and the mob is true or not the assassination of Bobby Kennedy was another and perhaps even greater milestone in American History than the president’s assassination. I doubt if as many people recognized it as such. I don’t think there was the outpouring of grief from around the world that President Kennedy’s death had brought. But the death of Bobby Kennedy removed the last obstacle to the war party’s domination of American politics and American foreign policy.
It’s been that way in part for 60 years and totally that way for 55 years. Countless lives have been lost and much infrastructure destroyed. But nothing and no one has stood in their way for 6 decades until now. In a virtual repeat of his father’s campaign against a sitting president of his own party, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. enters the race proclaiming a campaign based on telling the truth and on giving peace a chance. Unfortunately, the organization that opposed his father and uncle and whose power was cemented through their murders, that organization is now much more powerful because it has almost complete control of the media.
Another Kennedy stands for peace – and the truth
They don’t like this Kennedy. Not even a pedigree from arguably the nation’s most honored Democrat family can change that. He is nuts, he’s an eccentric, he’s a lunatic. He’s kooky and a purveyor of wacky conspiracy theories. Now he says that podcasts may very well decide this election because no one else will allow his views to be presented. He recently did an interview with Jordan Petersen and You Tube took it down. What about that interview, he asks, is so bad the American people should be prevented from hearing or seeing it?
The organization he opposes and its captive media know better than you know yourself what you should be exposed to. The truth is irrelevant because they decide what is true and what isn’t. They have graciously decided to take it upon themselves to decide what the American people may see, hear, and read. It’s quite a burden, and I suppose they expect us to be grateful because we have the opportunity to be one of them if we will just bend our knees to their god. Oh, they hate him, all right, and they very much want you to hate him as well. After all folks, if we are left to ourselves with no media, high tech, globalist, overlords to decide for us we might just make an unapproved choice as we did in 2016 and the organization simply cannot stand for that.
The Hotez dust-up
Mr. Kennedy was interviewed recently on the Joe Rogan Show which I believe is still the most listened to pod cast in the world. Joe talked about many things with him but in particular about vaccines. Dr. Peter Hotez who is codirector of the Texas Hospital Center for Vaccine Development took issue with the interview and called on Spotify to sanction Rogan. Joe gave it right back and called on Dr. Hotez to debate Kennedy on his show with an offer of $100, 000 to the charity of his choice for the debate. Since then, other parties have sweetened the deal and it now stands at $2.6 million but guess what, no deal.
Anybody can see the reason is fear of looking like a fool in front of the largest audience ever. But they try to make it sound as if they just don’t want to dignify his wild conspiracy theories. Dr. Hotez turned down the interview, but he chose his own safe, adoring media to announce it. Well, the darkness fears the light and runs from it.
Conclusion
Finally, folks, the media as a whole and the controllers of the Democrat Party, would rather see a bumbling, stumbling man who is at best a part time president with serious bribery and/or treason charges hanging over him as their candidate for president as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He has taken on the US war machine and announced that the Democrats are the party of war. A bold move from a bold man. Folks, when he speaks it brings me back to when I was young and so were Jack and Bobby.
At least that’s the way I see it.
Until next time folks,
This is Darrell Castle.
From CastleReport.us; appears by permmission.
Darrell Castle is an attorney in Memphis, Tennessee, a former USMC Combat Officer, 2008 Vice Presidential nominee, and 2016 Presidential nominee. Darrell gives his unique analysis of current national and international events from a historical and constitutional perspective. You can subscribe to Darrell's weekly podcast at castlereport.us
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