Given John Kennedy's military and foreign policy views, would he have followed the Vietnam policies pursued by Lyndon Johnson? Would he have...

This
subject is a source of great controversy, as there is absolutely no definitive way of knowing
if, had he lived, he would have followed the same course Lyndon Johnson did in massively
escalating US involvement in Southeast Asia.

Kennedy was a brilliant man
who, during his short time in office, was already becoming an iconic figure, especially to those
of us who were growing up at the time. His assassination then made him a martyr and a
near-mythic personage, perceived by much of the country as a heroic symbol of liberalism. Yet
Kennedy had endorsed the very ideas which, just a few years after his death, were anathema to
the anti-war movement and began to be questioned even by conservative, hawkish Americans. He
clearly believed in the "domino theory" that if the Communists took over one country
in Asia, then another country would soon fall to them, and another, and another. This was why he
had ordered combat troops into Vietnam in the first place. Would he have been wise enough
to...