Ted Kennedy's World

The late senator will be remembered mostly for contributions to domestic issues such as health care and education, but here are five areas where the Lion defined the U.S. foreign-policy debate.

BY JOSHUA KEATING | AUGUST 26, 2009

VIETNAM

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Words: "Continued optimism cannot be justified. … I found that the kind of war we are fighting in Vietnam will not gain our long-range objectives, that the pattern of destruction we are creating can only make a workable political future more difficult."  --World Affairs Council of Boston, Jan. 25, 1968

Actions: In the late 1960s, Kennedy gradually came to oppose the war his brother John had begun, though he never became as vocal an opponent as his brother Bobby. In one of his first leadership positions, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees, Kennedy lobbied the Lyndon B. Johnson administration to take more care with civilian casualties and refugees, making a trip to Vietnam in 1965.

In 1968, he returned to the country, this time sending staffers ahead to identify problems and cut through military spin. Kennedy was shocked by the endemic corruption of the South Vietnamese government and what he saw as a disregard for civilian life by U.S. forces. He returned a vocal Vietnam opponent, bringing his concerns directly to the White House. In 1973, he sponsored a successful resolution against further spending on the war.

The Vietnam experience heavily influenced his thinking on military intervention. He would later refer to Northern Ireland as "Britain’s Vietnam" and Iraq as "George Bush’s Vietnam."

 

Joshua Keating is deputy Web editor at Foreign Policy.

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6:26 PM ET

August 27, 2009

Kennedy's issues with foreign policy

In 1973, he sponsored a successful resolution against further spending on the war.

So he was the one who condemned the South Vietnamese regime to death, and the South Vietnamese to servitude, communism, and the tender mercies of the North's "re-education camps" (which took in millions). That cut-off of funding is the reason why South Vietnam ultimately fell - the ARVN had been holding off the (Chinese- and Soviet-assisted) North, but without US funding and supplies they began to run low on munitions and weaponry. I guess their lives weren't as important as the Bengalis'.

Then again, he was a Kennedy, so I guess it's only fitting that he ended a debacle Jack Kennedy largely created (by expanding the US role in the conflict) by creating another debacle.