James W. Douglass describes how, by 1963, JFK had made himself irredeemably odious to the dark powers of the intelligence community and the military-industrial complex.
June 10, 2023, marks the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous commencement address at Washington, D.C.’s American University. This speech—among JFK’s finest—laid out a vision of how to save America and humanity from the mutually-assured destruction that would come from nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. It also tackled the questions of how to exit the Cold War and accompanying arms race on honorable terms and how to create a new peace with the USSR based not on ignoring our ideological and political differences—which were substantive and fundamental—but instead recognizing our shared humanity, which had been lost in the propaganda, saber-rattling, and undermining actions from both sides amounting to “war by other means.”
