When JFK asked Nehru about Vietnam, the Indian leader dismissed the French war as an example of doomed colonialism, and said the US was pouring its aid money down a “bottomless hole.” He gently lectured the Kennedys, as if he were speaking to children, and Bobby wrote down in his notes, in an exasperated tone, that Nehru told them communism offered the people of the Third World “something to die for.” Bobby continued jotting down Nehru’s comments in his journal: “We [Americans] have only status quo to offer these people.”
