Actually the truth is something like that. The side we were backing were the heirs of the French colonials, large landholders extracting oppressive rents from peasants.
One of the problems with Vietnam was that socially, economically and politically we were not on the right side of the war. Thus winning hearts and minds was nearly an impossible task, not that that is a tactic we tried much of.
It was one of the worst fought wars in the history of warfare. We completely overmatched the other side militarily and still managed to keep so much of the population against us that anything like winning was impossible.
Well, the perspective you present is what I got in the news while growing up and what I was taught at the university. I was born in ‘64, so a little to young to have been a participant (at least on the American side).
It’s NOT what I’m getting from Lewis Sorley’s _A Better War_, which covers 1968-1975 and which I’m reading right now, or what I gleaned from Moyars _Triumph Forsaken_.
This is what leftists have put up as the reason that Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam encountered large and debilitating communist insurgencies that required massive American troop intervention. For years, I believed this mantra. Then I read the rest of what they had to say about insurgencies, namely that they invariably win. Which is headshakingly wrong. Every Latin American country has had communist insurgencies at one time or another. The only two countries in which the insurgencies have won are Cuba and Nicaragua. Ditto with Southeast Asia. Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Burma and Indonesia all encountered communist insurgencies and defeated them soundly.
The key difference with Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam? None of the countries that beat their domestic insurgencies had a long common border with Communist China, through which supplies could be shipped with impunity to the guerrillas and training could be provided with no threat to the sanctuaries in China itself. The Communists won in those three countries because (according to a Chinese source) the Chinese alone spent over $10b in free money assisting their comrades across the border, back when $10b was real money, and the Russians gave the North Vietnamese the credit they needed to purchase Migs, tanks and artillery that were subsequently used by the NVA to overrun South Vietnam, even as Congress cut off South Vietnam's aid. The North Vietnamese were still paying off Russian loans in the early 90's, before the Russians agreed to write the loan off in exchange for the termination of their lease of Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay facilities, as well as lease payments that were in arrears.
I can’t believe this leftist propaganda that you are regurgitating is appearing here! Go to Vietnam and talk to the people there, including those in the Northern part of the country. They will tell you that they wish the South and the US had won!
Besides, military victory and the support of the population are distinct things. Most of the time, the people are just sitting around supporting their families and hoping to avoid being conscripted by the armies fighting around them. And for good reason. They know that the parties to the war aren't fighting it for their benefit. It's an outright struggle for power in which both sides are looking to them for employment as cannon fodder.