“You seem devoted to JFK mythology, that’s for sure.”
And on occasion you post incredibly stupid comments, that being one of them. Kindly keep your ignorant speculations about what I think to yourself.
I happen to be very familiar with how our involvement in Vietnam developed. I lived it beginning with my dad’s tour in 1962. We had Vietnamese officers rotating through our home for years as they came to the states for training. Most Americans didn’t know the place existed when it was a daily part of my life.
Eisenhower was dealing with a lower level insurgency than what Kennedy dealt with. But if Ike had two more years in office and had to deal with it he wouldn’t have used the half measures and gradual escalation that JFK, LBJ and Nixon used to conduct the war. That just helped North Vietnam.
North Vietnam was the root of the insurgency and it had only two major cities. Instead of screwing around with counter insurgency campaigns and sporadic bombing, Hanoi and Haiphong harbor would have been treated to something out of Curtis LeMay’s handbook. The Marines wouldn’t have gone to shore in South Vietnam, they would have landed in the North and occupied it. There was no reason the war had to drag on.
you-””LBJ gets the blame for sending in combat troops the next year but as far as I can see the chaos set in motion by Diem’s death forced LBJ into choosing between a major American military role or a decision to abandon South Vietnam.””
ME-“No JFK, no Vietnam war,”
you-””I think that’s overstating it. The Communists had a vote in all of this. They ramped up their insurgency around the time Kennedy took office and he either had to increase our aid to Vietnam or let them get overrun.””
No, you are obsessed with defending JFK and the mythology, you seem to want to switch to whatever works, no JFK didn’t start the war when he sent in 16,000 troops, or that he had to start the war because he was forced into it for some reason.
Eisenhower stood by and watched as the French lost their Vietnam war, he evidently didn’t us to get into another war in Asia.
No JFK, then no Vietnam war for America, Nixon would not have sent in the 16,000 troops.
No JFK, then no Vietnam, the election of JFK destroyed America. As destructive and incompetent and corrupt as JFK was, the passing of his immigration policy after his death, made recovery for us, impossible.