Yesterday, June 10, was the anniversary date of President John F. Kennedy's famous "Peace Speech" at American University in 1963, which was about five months before he was assassinated in Dallas. It was that speech — specifically, the vision set forth in that speech — that got him killed.

The speech set forth a vision that Kennedy had for the future direction of America that directly conflicted with the vision that the U.S. national-security establishment had for the future direction of the country. It was that conflict of visions that led to the war that broke out between Kennedy and the national-security establishment, a war that the latter would win on the streets of Dallas.

The war actually stretched back to the Bay of Pigs crisis in 1961, when JFK threatened to tear the CIA to pieces and scatter them to the winds for lying to Kennedy in the run-up to the CIA's invasion of Cuba. For its part, the CIA considered Kennedy to be a coward and a traitor for refusing to provide air support for the Cuban exiles who the CIA had trained to invade Cuba.

The Pentagon, as well as the CIA, were convinced that a communist Cuba posed a grave threat to the  "national security" of the United States. Thus, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Pentagon continually exhorted Kennedy to order a full-scale military invasion of Cuba. That's what the top-secret Operation Northwoods was all about — to provide JFK with a fraudulent excuse to invade the island and effect regime-change there.

Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union installed in Cuba nuclear missiles pointed at the United States. As far as the national-security establishment was concerned, JFK now had a justification for invading Cuba and replacing the Castro-led communist regime with another U.S. puppet, similar to the Cuban ruler who Fidel Castro had ousted from power, Fulgencio Batista.