To the editor:

The U.S. path to involvement in Vietnam was more nuanced than described by Curtis Bennett in his letter of Nov. 17. The timeline of involvement stretches back to the post-war period. President Truman established an advisory group in 1950 to assist the French in then-Indochina and President Eisenhower considered U.S. involvement in France’s ground war.

U.S. advisory actions in Vietnam expanded under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and President Johnson sent the first contingent of what, by 1968, would be over 500,000 troops. Advisory actions and combat operations occurred simultaneously in Vietnam; my father served as an adviser to the South Vietnamese Army in 1966-67.

Mr. Bennett is correct in that our war in Vietnam started out small in terms of “boots on the ground” and our involvement in Syria has the potential to become more complex in light of the recent attacks in Paris and the worldwide threat posed by ISIL. The experience of Vietnam (and the more recent war in Iraq) will forever remain in the nation’s consciousness.

I served over 30 years in the military and none of us who trained for war “naively assume that nobody is going to get hurt, nobody is going to die!” Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee aptly stated, “It is well that war is so terrible — otherwise we would grow too fond of it.” In the end it is our elected civilian leadership, not the military, who require counseling on the pitfalls and dangers of getting into a war too hastily.