NSAM 263: He was pulling out. That's a large part of why he got nailed.The left of which you speak would be Noam Chomsky denying he was any different than LBJ.
LBJ "got us into Vietnam" with his Tonkin Gulf hysteria.
Then he blew the prosecution by not bombing Hanoi and mining Haiphong.
The Day It Became The Longest War
Then Johnson wimped out in March, 1968, whining that the North beat us with the Tet Offensive--when Bui Tin said they were done.
That's when the Fonda-Kerry-Wimpy LBJ gave them the hope to continue.
The failure, said Bui Tin, was not closing the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Johnson's sanitized target lists and sanctuaries allowed that.
No, Kennedy was roundly criticized by the likes of Dealey the editor of the Dallas Morning News as "riding Caroline's tricycle."
Yet it was LBJ who cursed the Joint Chiefs when they came to the White House in November, 1965 for his permission to mine Haiphong and bomb Hanoi.
LBJ was screaming about World War III--that kind of thing was amusing to the North Vietnamese leadership.
When Nixon went to China, the term for the Vietnamese was dogs.
JFK was pulling out the 16,000 advisors; LBJ was fighting a limited war.
The entire issue of the Powell Doctrine was due to the failure of Johnson's limited war concept.
Overwhelming force is the main thrust, a concept LBJ shunned at every turn.
JFK was leaving the field; it's in NSAM 263.
All U.S. personnel to be out by end of 1965.
Kennedy wasn't my guy, nor LBJ.
I went to New York with Young Americans for Freedom in 1964 to draft Goldwater.
The one who was going to get us into a war, or get the world destroyed--
--whatever Church Lady Bill Moyers meant with a little girl plucking daisy petals.
JFK was not leaving Vietnam.
By the way, if leaving Vietnam was the reason ‘they’killed him, who is they?