Previous USA administrations worked hand in glove with the French to maintain French colonial rule in Vietnam, but that effort met defeat. The country was partitioned, and the next move the USA made was to make sure that it would not be re-united by abrogating scheduled re-unification and national elections, and installing a corrupt Catholic-Vietnamese puppet government in the southern half, and putting American military advisors in to help that government quash resistance from the Buddhist majority. That happened under the Eisenhower government.

So Kennedy did not start that war. He did continue it, and Johnson turned it into a giant American war, and Nixon followed along the same path.

It so happens, Jack, that you are quite right about Kennedy being "an overprivileged playboy at the head of an imperialist mass murder machine who risked the survival of civilization to maintain American hegemony".

Indeed.

However, ANYONE who had become president would have gone on to command that same imperialist mass murder machine. It's the overall system itself that is the problem...just as it was in imperial Rome. To blame it all on the president of the day or the Emperor of the day (in Rome) is to miss the point. He's just temporary. And he is, to a great extent, a front man for huge imperial interests who will destroy him if he doesn't serve them obediently and faithfully.

I think Kennedy was the kind of man who had such self-confidence that he thought he could take on certain entrenched powers in the system and beat them. He swore that he would break the CIA, and I think he intended to do just that. I also think that's one of the reasons he died young.

There were things I liked about Kennedy, things I don't see in many USA presidents. He had guts and he had style...and the courage of his convictions. He could inspire people. He was also...as you pointed out...a hell of a lot better than the Republican alternative.