In that case war might have been inevitable as its conceivable to see Kennedy then in turn ordering bombings of North Vietnam and eventually putting in marines to protect other air bases from future attacks. Given the Vietcong would retaliate from the bombing campaigns escalation would continue to be inevitable.
Yes, essentially.
(For what it's worth, I should point out something important about Camp Holloway--from what I can tell from the wiki article, it was home to only a single transportation company during the Kennedy years, it only receives a full battallion compliment in late 1964. I don't know whether that matters, as JFK had 16,000 troops in country under his administration, so if Camp Holloway isn't an inviting enough target for the VC by 1965 they'll just chose some other American base. But heck, a smaller unit there might actually get totally overrun by an NLF attack! So a hundred or so
dead and/or captured!)
But if this is the reason why JFK enters the war is an actual attack on American forces and not flawed intelligence which can easily be construed as a lie as it still is today for Johnson to conspire to start the war, how does this affect popular opinion in the long run and especially the anti-war movement?
I think you're placing too much emphasis on the shoddy investigative work behind the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and its importance to history; the fact is, any escalation in the RVN by any POTUS is going to involve more obvious strategic deception, or rather it will eventually become obvious that there is massive deception at work.
Ultimately, the famous 'credibility gap' from our history is about the Johnson administration promising America they were stabilising the South, that things were better than they seemed. Officially, in public, they were winning, they were always meant to be winning. Until suddenly LBJ declares mumble mumble this is not the case, and mah fellow 'Merkins, I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination for my party for another term as your president...
Forget Bush's WMD analogy for massive escalation's beginning; think the analogy of Cheney and co.'s boastfulness about "we will be treated like liberators in Iraq!!11!!!" when it comes to a Vietnam escalation continuing so long on the same path.
My take is that even if Kennedy does escalate the war to ground troops he doesn't stay in as long as Johnson does and should be successful in trying the diplomatic route better. Perhaps have a chance to end the war by the end of his second term.
As I mentioned above, this is one possibility, I certainly won't reject it out of hand...
what's the likelihood that he would have gone the Nixon route as well and ordered similar operations to Linebacker and mining Haiphong harbour?
...But this nightmarish scenario is another possibility.
My fear is the Kennedys take the opportunity to use their love of back channel diplomacy to find out whether Mao does or doesn't care if the USAF sorties close to his borders as a matter of course, or whether the Soviets will threaten some kind of retaliation if the main DRV harbour (which their merchant ships docked in) is bombed and mined.
In OTL Johnson's administration was terrified of doing anything along those two lines, for fear of provoking the respective great Red powers.
But then a ruthless foreign policy troubleshooter enters the Oval Office in 1969, and it's on, bad luck Russian and Chinese heavyweights.
Jack Kennedy considered himself an FP troubleshooter, much like Nixon did.
He might even have been remembered as less harsh by history than Johnson was.
On the war, if he's bringing LBJ's autumn '68 peaceseeking attempts forward by a year or so, he really should be given the sort of credit Johnson never got.
But on the subject of everything else to that point, does he begin to repent like Johnson did in his own reclusive, maudling retirement years?
I think he's going to be a vigorous guy for at least a decade after leaving office.
Now, in this day and age, I keep thinking of a more recent attractive, smooth operator who goes around, using his pretty damn effective presentational skills to engage just about every anti-war opponent he comes across, to brilliantly state his case for why history will absolve him for going to war in the first place.
Tony Blair.