Small Things Count

“He kept the peace.” That’s what JFK said he wanted as his epitaph. And that’s what his short presidency focused on. His promotion of a ban on nuclear weapons helped bring about the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. After being President for only three months, he faced the Bay of Pigs—a situation caused by the previous (Eisenhower) administration, who wanted the U.S. involved in Cuba.  He tried to avoid involvement in Laos (also set up by the previous administration) by signing a neutrality agreement.  He negotiated with the Soviet Union and fought his own military and intelligence people, who proposed a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.  Khrushchev came to respect him.  But a year later JFK found himself in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  JFK also fought against our intervention in Viet Nam because he knew it would escalate, and, once we were there, he planned to get us out as soon as possible.

For details about these events and how JFK handled pressure even from within our own government and pushed for peace, read Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s “John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace.”

Today, as I think about that senseless death fifty years, and the violence caused in our world by self-centered, power-hungry people and governments, I’m thankful for the short period of time when we had a champion of peace. I don’t enter into debates over what JFK would have done with his Presidency had he lived. I care only that his dream of peace be carried on by future leaders and that the world come to its senses.