For most Americans, the lessons of Vietnam were reasonably clear before we invaded Iraq and have been painfully reinforced by the ongoing disaster there: Don’t fight needless wars; don’t go blundering around in countries where you don’t know the language, history or culture; don’t underestimate the power of nationalism, ethnicity and religion to bind together — or tear apart — people whose interests otherwise seem to diverge or converge; and, most of all, don’t imagine that military force can solve fundamentally political problems.

Jane Fonda went over there and put a lot of those draftees’ asses in mortal danger. No less a figure than General Giap himself said the media and popular culture influence on American public sentiment was an immense help to the Communist cause.

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/1963_Vietnam_Withdrawal_Plans

“The controversy surrounds the fact that military reporting of the war effort in 1963 was decidedly rosy, and Kennedy made statements indicating that the positive outlook made withdrawal possible…. John Newman’s landmark 1991 book JFK & Vietnam argues that Kennedy knew that the military reporting was skewed, and intended to withdraw anyway. Other analyses by Peter Dale Scott and James Galbraith (son of Kennedy advisor John Kenneth Galbraith), and recent books including one by no less than Robert McNamara himself, support this view. On the other side are many Vietnam historians and also social critic Noam Chomsky, whose Rethinking Camelot is largely a rebuttal of this view.