John F. Kennedy: Shitbird Score 44

Ethical & Moral Breakdown:
Kennedy is the Camelot myth — polished, photogenic, celebrated. The reality is messier. He inherited Eisenhower's Cuba obsession and made it worse with the Bay of Pigs, then nearly ended the world during a missile crisis that U.S. policy helped create. He escalated Vietnam from 900 advisors to over 16,000, authorized napalm and the strategic hamlet program, and greenlit Operation Mongoose's sabotage-and-assassination campaign against Cuba.

And the entry his hagiographers always skip: in August 1963, via Cable 243, his administration authorized the generals' coup against Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem and his brother were murdered in the back of an armored personnel carrier on November 2 — decapitating South Vietnamese governance on the eve of the war's escalation, three weeks before Kennedy himself was shot. He also signed off on FBI wiretapping of civil rights leaders, including Dr. King, at Hoover's request.

Key Policies & Their Toll:

• Bay of Pigs (1961) — ~300 killed, regional destabilization, deepened Cold War antagonism (direct)
• Vietnam escalation — 16,000 advisors, napalm authorization, strategic hamlets (direct share)
• Diem coup (Cable 243, 1963) — authorized the coup that killed Diem and destabilized Saigon; counted downstream (25%)
• Operation Mongoose — covert war on Cuba, including assassination plots against Castro
• Wiretapping of civil rights leaders under FBI surveillance programs

Toll Assessment:

• Avoidable Deaths: ~30,000
• Unavoidable Deaths: ~100,000

Shitbird Score Breakdown:

• Base Score (avoidable death toll): 29
• Ethics Penalty: +10 (Vietnam escalation, Diem coup, domestic surveillance)
• Near-Apocalypse Bonus: +5 (Cuban Missile Crisis risk)
• Final Shitbird Score: 44

"Ask not what your country can do for you."
Ask instead what your country is doing to everyone else when the cameras are off.