You are right in the particulars. My we included the American public. In the post WWII anti-communist hysteria, it was easy to use a false flag to take us to war against godless communists, just as Bush took us to this endless war against Islam.

Ho, who had fought the brutal Japanese, ( Why do the Japanese never get blamed for being easily the most horrible people ever to fight a modern war?), then defeated the inept French, turned to China and Russia because, after the partition, he had no other hope for the support he needed to reunify Vietnam.

Ho was always a nationalist first. I think it was hard for him to turn to Russia and China, especially to to Chinese, Vietnam’s historical enemy. He didn’t want to be anyone’s puppet and never really was.

But we left him no where else to turn. If we had stopped the partition and provided assistance to Vietnam, history might have been very different.

Oddly. the same could be said for Cuba. Castro overthrew a corrupt, brutal Batista regime. After that it could have gone either way. Butt a century of US interference and intervention in South America was too much for there to be any kind of trust. Labeling him a communist and the American embargo forced his hand.

Ho and Castro were brutal killers, but genuine national leaders. They wanted above all independent, nonaligned, countries. By making them communists, we left them to no choices, and as a result of this incredibly stupid policy, we got the very real: very dangerous Cuban Missile crisis and a long, draining, losing war.

I t could have all been very different.