College Prof Henry Kissinger published articles in the late ‘50s. Those papers have been the measuring point from which all US action from then to now can be measured.
Eisenhower had “advisors” who were labeled as “ugly Americans” due to their dismissive demeanor. JFK created the myth of Special Forces, Green Beret: quality, not quantity.
LBJ and the Whiz kids (in both the War on Poverty and War on Vietnam) pushed QUANTITY, NOT QUALITY. When I was in Vietnam 66-67 there were 500,000 in uniform. We didn’t know why LBJ sent us there, nor what we were supposed to do. Many of the guys went into town, raped the local women which turned the entire village against us, got drunk, flipped their jeeps into the the rice patty and drowned in 18” of mud. But as personnel clerks, we sent the body home with a letter: Your loved one died a hero. I never saw an “enemy”. I never met any other person (in Pleiku) who saw an enemy. A lot of “duty to dead” due to drunken vehicle tragedies. I left Vietnam Christmas eve 1 week before the Tet offensive.
Truman sent the first advisors in 1950 although some Americans had been used there under FDR, Eisenhower kept the advisors and all was fine, he kept them his second term and then JFK had them, and then 1963 and JFK happened, there were a lot of crack units and crack troops in Vietnam during the war.
What was the myth about Special Forces?