No one can be certain how Kennedy would have coped in 1964 or 1965 with the situation in Vietnam, which remained fluid and unpredictable. Perhaps he would have cut his losses. Kennedy did express greater doubts in private about escalating American involvement than he dared to state in public. On several occasions he reminded hawkish advisers that General MacArthur, no dove, had warned about the costs of America trying to fight a land war in Asia. It also seems possible that JFK would have reconsidered his course after the 1964 election. He told his friend Charles Bartlett in 1963, "We don't
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