Ted Kennedy's World

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."

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