WI: JFK had lived through his assassination attempt?

I could see US involvement under Kennedy limited to simply airstrikes and defenses created around airbases in South Vietnam. He doesn't send 500,000 soldiers eventually to hunt the Vietcong in the jungle. Operation Rolling Thunder doesn't last eleven years. We would be lucky to see a fifth of the number of troops sent by Kennedy to Vietnam. The war still becomes a quagmire though and the anti-war movement is smaller though also.
 
I could see US involvement under Kennedy limited to simply airstrikes and defenses created around airbases in South Vietnam. He doesn't send 500,000 soldiers eventually to hunt the Vietcong in the jungle. Operation Rolling Thunder doesn't last eleven years. We would be lucky to see a fifth of the number of troops sent by Kennedy to Vietnam. The war still becomes a quagmire though and the anti-war movement is smaller though also.

Why? JFK was a Cold War Democrat who criticized Ike on being soft on Communism and allowing a missile gap. He was the one that really started escalating things in Vietnam. He stood up to Khrushchev in the missile crisis , had Diem assassinated and tried to assassinate Castro. This was not a guy who went around singing Kumbya and "Give peace a chance"!
 
Why? JFK was a Cold War Democrat who criticized Ike on being soft on Communism and allowing a missile gap. He was the one that really started escalating things in Vietnam. He stood up to Khrushchev in the missile crisis , had Diem assassinated and tried to assassinate Castro. This was not a guy who went around singing Kumbya and "Give peace a chance"!

But he's not Lyndon Johnson who is going to micromanage the war and send so many soldiers to fight a single war.
 
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