While I'm entirely satisfied with the simple Oswald explanation, you are correct to emphasis how utterly terrible JFK's defense and foreign policy was. The sev

While I'm entirely satisfied with the simple Oswald explanation, you are correct to emphasis how utterly terrible JFK's defense and foreign policy was. The severe weakness shown in the Bay of Pigs debacle, an Eisenhower scheme he utterly wrecked by moving the location as well as the last minute denial of air support, directly lead to Khrushchev's nuclear missile adventure in Cuba. Which led to the closest the world has ever gotten to nuclear war, Soviet subs were under orders allowing them to use their nuclear torpedoes if damaged, and one captain decided this was a case but the decision required three officers, one of whom declined. (This ultimately resulted in Khrushchev getting sacked.) There's lots more, but it's also worth mentioning that just a month before he was assassinated, he went along with his Best and Brightests' scheme to depose and inevitably assassinate the President of South Vietnam and his brother, which ruined that nation's officer corps and any trust they had in us, which led directly to our having to replace them with our own forces, and the nightmare that followed. LBJ's prosecution of the war was downright criminal, but at the highest level moral, he acknowledged the "you broke it, you own it" principle. But one could see members of the Deep State deciding that JFK's assassination of an ally President made him fair game for assassination in turn. And for all they knew necessary to save the nation, he'd been reckless all his life, succeeding in starting WWIII given another 1-5 years was entirely possible.