Kennedy's View on War
On Salon.com:
He believed in the domino theory. With hindsight, I think it was wrong. He believed that we would lose. If we were to lose South Vietnam, as Eisenhower said, we'd weaken the security of the West across the world. Eisenhower believed it, Kennedy believed it, I believed it, we all believed in it; I think we were wrong.But despite that he would have withdrawn, because I think he felt -- and on this I think he was wiser than many others -- that even if the domino theory was correct, the security of the West would be weakened across the world if we lost Vietnam, he believed it was unlikely we could retain it by the application of external military power. And he was absolutely correct in that. The issue was never properly debated. But that was the reason why I think, had he lived, we would not have had 500,000 men there.
That's Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under President John F. Kennedy, speaking about the Vietnam conflict, but more importantly and more broadly, about the security of our country and the security of the world.
The key point is that regardless of whether security would be weakened by the loss of one front, the maintenance of overall security can not be achieved by fighting a war. We must stop believing we can kill everyone that threatens our security. Peace does not have to come through war.