Robert Kennedy made clear that JFK was not pulling us out of Vietnam, and we would not have gotten into Vietnam if Nixon had won, it was JFK who put our troops there.
For 13 years from 1950 when Truman sent the advisors and through 2 terms of Eisenhower, we had advisors and everything was fine, it was JFK who sent in 16,000 troops.
There have been entire books explaining the JFK policy on Vietnam.
At first he supported intervention—then just before his assassination he changed his mind.
This is very well documented in a stream of executive orders.
I’d say your assessment of history is the correct one. JFK got the foothold in Vietnam, LBJ ramped it up into a war.
Wrong. LBJ was the first president to commit us troops in 1965.