This generation of Americans has already had enough of war . . . We do not want war . . .. The world knows the United States will never start a war.

—John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963

AS TUESDAY’S presidential election drew near, the debate about U.S. foreign policy became littered with ghosts in service to analogies. Is the war in Iraq “another Vietnam,” a quagmire in the desert? Is George W. Bush “another” Lyndon B. Johnson? Is John McCain “another” Bush or Johnson? Is Barack Obama “another” John F. Kennedy?

It is said that we are condemned to repeat the history we fail to understand. But which history do we most need to understand at this historical moment, with the U.S. bogged down in what seems to be an endless war and occupation in Iraq and an expanding war in Afghanistan, and at a moment when some American officials are speaking publicly about the possibility of bombing Iran? Does history have anything to tell us about whether it makes a difference who we elect as president in matters of war and peace? Does it provide clues as to the difference President Obama might make, after he assumes office on Jan. 20, 2009?

It does. Research in recently declassified documents and formerly secret presidential audiotapes — captured in the new documentary film Virtual JFK, Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived — demonstrates that John F. Kennedy would very likely not have taken the U.S. to war in Vietnam. In six deep crises (over Cuba, Laos and Berlin, as well as Vietnam), JFK avoided war, despite being pressured to go to war by his advisers. The film concludes that Virtual JFK, the JFK who didn’t live to deal fully with the crisis in Vietnam, would have withdrawn from Vietnam and taken the political heat generated by the withdrawal.

We can now compare JFK with his successor, Lyndon Johnson. LBJ retained all of JFK’s top foreign- affairs officials. We now know that after assuming office on Nov. 22, 1963, LBJ was pressured by these advisers to take the nation to war in Vietnam. Their argument was the same one they had put to JFK: You cannot let our South Vietnamese ally fall to the communists. If you do, a U.S. pledge guaranteeing the security of an ally will be worthless, another “domino” will fall to communism, and your presidency will be judged a failure. In response to these arguments, JFK said “No;” and LBJ said “Alright, go ahead.” Same advisers. Same conflict. Different president.

In matters of war and peace, JFK was not only poles apart from LBJ, he was also, unmistakably, the anti-George W. Bush. JFK understood and took to heart the wisdom of John Adams, who in a letter to his wife, Abigail, in 1795, while the U.S. was poised on the brink of war with France, wrote, “great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.” Whereas Kennedy was pressured to go to war, and successfully resisted the pressure, Bush and his colleagues were the source of the pressure to begin an unnecessary and tragic war in Iraq. More than 2 million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 Americans died unnecessarily during the American phase of the war in Southeast Asia. So far in Iraq, some estimates put the death toll at more than 1 million Iraqis, in addition to the more than 4,000 Americans who have died in that equally unnecessary conflict.

As a referendum on foreign policy, the electorate voted “no” to Sen. John McCain’s pledge to be more hawkish on the Iraq war than even some of the loyalists around George Bush, and “no” to McCain’s claim that the U.S. was right to invade Iraq, right to occupy Iraq, and would be right to stay in Iraq “for a hundred years, if necessary,” if that is what it takes to bring to power in Baghdad a stable, democratic government congenial to U.S. interests.

Voters also said “no” to McCain’s pledge to bomb Iran under a wide range of contingencies, “no” to initiating yet another unnecessary U.S. war. They voted “yes” to Sen. Barack Obama’s opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and “yes” to Obama’s stated intention to withdraw U.S. personnel from Iraq as soon as possible in an orderly and dignified way. They also voted “yes” to Obama’s promise to talk to enemies, rather than bully them or bomb them as a first resort.

In giving their approval to Barack Obama’s stated foreign-policy objectives, voters of a certain age could recall JFK’s remark in his Inaugural Address: “We must never negotiate out of fear, but we must never fear to negotiate.” Obama’s stated approach to foreign policy is, in fact, uncannily JFK-like.

Voters can hope, but they cannot know for sure whether, after Jan. 20, 2009, President Obama will display steely, JFK-like resistance to the urge toward war he will inevitably have to face. If he does not, then the analogy with Kennedy will be little more than rhetorical. After all, LBJ claimed erroneously throughout his presidency that he was prosecuting the war in Vietnam as a “continuation” of Kennedy’s policies. It is now clear that Vietnam was Johnson’s war, not Kennedy’s. If President Obama can face down those urging military solutions to political problems then he, not Johnson, will be the true heir to JFK’s foreign policy. Americans from across the political spectrum must remind him as often as necessary that this generation, like JFK’s, “has already had enough of war,” and “will never start a war.”

James G. Blight, a professor at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, is a producer of the new film, Virtual JFK: Vietnam, If Kennedy Had Lived and co-author (with Janet M. Lang and David A. Welch) of the companion book to the film, to be published in January by Rowman & Littlefield.