Marc J. Selverstone in his new book The Kennedy Withdrawal, offers an inside look at presidential decisionmaking in this limited period of the Vietnam War and makes clear that portrayals of Kennedy as a dove are overdrawn. Through the use of the presidential tapes, alongside declassified documents, memoirs, and oral histories, he lifts the veil on this legend of Camelot. He argues that Kennedy’s withdrawal was in fact a cagey strategy for keeping the United States involved in the fight— a strategy the country adopted decades later in Afghanistan.
Marc Selverstone
