I was there when this crap started. When Rolling Thunder began on March 1st, 1965, I was in Thailand. Shortly after that the Marines landed on the beaches of Vietnam. They jumped off the landing craft and waded ashore to meet girls with leis and reporters with movie cameras. They could have docked and gone ashore without getting wet, but this was an LBJ and McNamara production. I was sent down to Vietnam in June. When I got to Vietnam as a radar site commander I was in the midst of a bunch of Army guys flying Huey gunships. We weren't pretending to be advisors any longer.
Eisenhower was the first president I voted for, and I remember Eisenhower warning about getting involved in a war in Asia. One reason he backed the anti-communists in the South was to avoid the kind of war his successors got us into. When I look at the history of the damned thing, going back to WW II, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to back Ho Chi Minh toward the end of the big war. That could lead to a long discussion in which I don't intend to get involved, but there are some good arguments in that direction.