anti-communistic fervor was, and is, a massive boondoggle.
The US was fighting in Vietnam, against VC, before the Gulf of Tonkin. The French fight against the VC from 1950 was paid for by the US and supported by US military advisers and equipment, and the US took over the French military role in 1955 (which is why 1955 is the usual cited start date of the Vietnam War, though even that is arguably late); there was a major escalation in direct US troop involvement in the Vietnam War under President Kennedy.
Johnson didn't start the US involvement in the war in Vietnam, unless you think he was running US foreign policy (including directing the military) out of his Senate office, independent of the White House.
Still, in no case is it reasonable to say that Truman started it.
Initially, but that stopped being true well before Tonkin.
> Per Wikipedia, ground combat troops first came after Tonkin
Not sure which Wikipedia page you got that from but see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Assistance_Command,...
Which discusses, among other things, the 1964 MACV/MAAG-Vietnam reorg due to the scale of combat deployments straining the advisory-oriented command structure, and a similar issue prompting a naval command structure reorg in 1966.
(Those reports were under Johnson, but thet largely addressed strains produced by the ramp up under Kennedy.)
> Still, in no case is it reasonable to say that Truman started it.
Sure, Eisenhower or Kennedy are more reasonable.
> By 1964 there were 23,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, but this escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. In response the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave Lyndon B. Johnson authorization to increase U.S. military presence, deploying ground combat units for the first time and increasing troop levels to 184,000.
"Ground combat units for the first time" was the phrase that, to me, said that the US was now there in a full war condition.
> Every time the ruling party switches, followers of both parties warp into parallel universes with entirely different realities.
There is plenty of information that shows this to be untrue, especially in this case of warfare that you talk about, example:
> 37 percent of Democrats back Trump’s missile strikes. In 2013, 38 percent of Democrats supported Obama’s plan. That is well within the margin of error.
> In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, a Washington Post–ABC News poll found that only 22 percent of Republicans supported the U.S. launching missile strikes against Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against civilians.
> A new Post-ABC poll finds that 86 percent of Republicans support Donald Trump’s decision to launch strikes on Syria for the same reason. Only 11 percent are opposed.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-...