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Originally Posted by peter12
The US involvement in Vietnam was by no means a unilateral endeavour. They were there at the request of the South Vietnamese government, (ARVN suffered 200 000 dead and 500 000 casualties total during the war) and to blame the civilian casualties on the Americans is absolute garbage.
There are many, many substantiated reports of ideological cleansing by the NVA and Vietcong, that may have resulted in 100s of thousands of civilian casualties.
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Well, we'll heartily agree to disagree. I'd contend that the US went into Vietnam to support (initially) French interests there, not Vietnamese. The US very clearly stated that they were preventing a dominoe effect of communism sweeping through South East Asia (the containment policy of which turned out to be a dud). And I also believe that you very much can blame most of the millions of deaths on the invading and occupying forces, the US being by far the most significant.
Did the bad guys win the Vietnam War? And if so, I presume those are the same 'terrorists' who run the country today, given that the regime is pretty much directly descended from Ho Chi Minh? I find it odd that US officials have open dialogue with this terrorist regime...