It's the revisionists who are the ones that say JFK would go into Vietnam as an American military conflict regardless of any unforeseen circumstances. And I'm personally tired of it. And I generally do the politically correct thing of saying that along with JFK, Nixon would likely not have gone into Vietnam, or Rockefeller, or any other possible President for the 60s, which is quite true. But I shouldn't have to.
The revisionism is born out of a reaction which is one of cynicism, and I believe interrelates to how we killed all of our heroes in the 60s and post-60s generations. What it reacts to is Kennedy as popular, Kennedy as our slain leader, Kennedy as some one who was gunned down just on the brink of so many great things. And he was on the brink of many great things. A lot of that legislation that you hear only Johnson could have done would have gotten through the Congress due to the inner mechanisms of the Congress and the Congressmen and Senators themselves. But there was this school of thought when things started to go wrong in the Johnson years that if only Kennedy had been there and Johnson had not, it wouldn't have happened. The counter reaction to that was the Kennedy would have been bad if not worse, would have done the sins, would have perhaps done them greater (not greater as in better, but as in more extreme), and would have far fewer achievements. And it is cynical, and part of that psychology of kill all the gods whereby the Modernist idea of perfect, do good heroes to look up to was not replaced with an idea that these people were human-beings and while not perfect they were not terrible people, but instead with the idea that they were bad destined to cause ruination. And I think the counterreaction to Kennedy has been worse than the original thoughts, because while previous generations did look at Kennedy with eyes wider than deserving, he was more good than bad.
Kennedy had grave, grave worries about Vietnam. This is why time and again, when he was pressed to militarize the situation more for America, he refused it. This is why, though he increased the number of advisers in Vietnam, he did not involve combat troops. Kennedy did not like the situation in Vietnam. He believed it was a clusterfuck. Diem was an embarrassment (I've related previously he said his nation needed 6 Hitlers, which embarrassed the US), who was hated by his own people, who was corrupt and tyrannical with no modicum of effectiveness save for being able to play factions off of one another to keep balance, he appointed people to high positions based not on merit but on being family or loyal which was not helping his nation, and he was not winning the war his nation was fighting against Communism; he was a bad leader, and though those who followed were not any better, he still remains a bad leader who was not winning the war anymore than his successors. He was aware historically, being a smart man, of how insurgencies had cost nations gravely and had been effective in winning against larger forces. In more recent history, he was aware of Korea and how close the United States had come to losing that and how much that had ruined Truman's administration and Truman's popularity. He had frequently butted heads with the military, especially LeMay, when they pressed him for militarist solutions of issues during his administration, such as the missile crisis, and when they asked him and pressured him to let them bomb people into the stone age. And so on and so on. Kennedy was a Cold Warrior, but he was not a Hawk. And he did mention his trepidation on Vietnam (I recall a quote where he said that if he sent in more people, the bands would cheer and there'd by a parade, and then everyone would forget and ask for more, and then the same thing would happen and they'd ask for more, and more, and more), and he did discuss disengagement. He asked McNamara to draw up plans to withdraw advisers by 1965. McNamara thought phased withdrawal by 1968 was more realistic (and there is
documentation like this; about 1:08 in). And keep in mind, I understand many of Kennedy's public statements on Vietnam said to not withdraw and so forth, but you must always in history understand what's part of the news cycle which is presented and what is part of the real situation and the real thoughts and what was really going on. Likewise, the situation was not one of a war at that time on America's part; it was aiding a foreign nation, through training and supply, to fight a war. So Kennedy had more personal doubts on Vietnam than LBJ did. LBJ did have doubts, but Kennedy had more trepidation. Kennedy had watched Vietnam closer for longer than LBJ had when Johnson Americanized the war. Kennedy was a foreign policy knowledgeable President, whereas Johnson was focused on domestic policy.
Vietnam is problematic for our American psyche, because we can't imagine avoiding it short of altering centuries of history to the point where we avoid a reality where nothing is the same. When we think of Vietnam, we always look at it as a slope that we were always going to slide down, finding ourselves landing in some god forsaken jungle. But that's not true. Vietnam is quite easy to avoid as a war. When polls were first taken in 1964 on public opinion of Vietnam, I believe only something like 37% of people paid any attention to it. And of that, most expected a ceasefire or the fall of Saigon. So no one really cared about Vietnam. It's not China. It's not Russia. It's not any of these major countries which had become Communist. It was this country, who the hell knows where on the map, with a name people weren't sure how to pronounce. So if it were to fall to Communism, no one will really notice. The Republicans could try to make it an issue, but I doubt it would be one, and should it have fallen, we'd probably be talking on here today, bringing it up as a nitpick point to explain how horrible LBJ or JFK was for letting this little known place fall. And the issue was never abandoning South Vietnam; it was withdrawing advisers. The US would still support South Vietnam with supplies and aid, and maybe even spy work via the CIA and maybe even some Special Ops missions in cooperation with the Republic of Vietnam government and ARVN. But the US would not get into Vietnam as an American military action.
The idea of legislation failing to pass is a reasonable argument. I disagree in many ways and feel that while the New Frontier perhaps would have been paler than the Great Society, much of the stuff still would have gotten through, especially after 1964 when JFK will get all these Liberals coming in. But, I do think that's a reasonable argument. Vietnam I wholeheartedly disagree on.