The war would have turned out the same, maybe. We did not commit to win it, LBJ & Company were a bunch of fools.

The tide turned on Ho in the 50's because the French wanted to keep the rubber plantations that were one of the few valuable things left from their empire. We stupidly supported them in that endeavor and it led to disaster.

The US had troops in "French Indochina" during the war helping Ho fight the Japanese. OSS, Marines and ethnic Chinese mercenaries mostly. When the French stepped back in, so did the Chinese & Russians (they both were spreading their influence back then)

We most likely should not have been there at all, my point is LOTS of naive well-meaning folks got behind the communists and that form of rule is abhorent to all that the US is, was and will be.

reference the march cry "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Mihn, the NLF is gonna win!"

WTF? the communist way of life was a totalitarian hell that snuffed out more lives than WWI & II combined. Do some reading of Stalin's (aka "Uncle Joe" as FDR called him) agrarian reforms, forced collectivization and see how many there were snuffed out or starved. Same with Chairman Mao's "reeducation of the peasant class.


basically, the communist elites ruled with terror and the common man got it right up the ass, kind of like in medevial Europe. If you were not landed gentry your life was not anything.