But, in a perverse reverse looking looking way, wasn't that the point of the war, to spread democracy and/or capitalism and some peace to the region? Even if it's shrouded in the communism that the pols of the time stated the war was going to get rid of? In the end the brand of communism in the day was morphed to capitalism. Kind of weird as we find ourselves sliding into the version of communism in the U.S. that was the life of the North Vietnamese at that time.
The point of Vietnam was to stop Soviet expansionism. I’ve heard to ludicrous suggestion that Ho Chi Minh was Vietnam’s “George Washington”. He was a Comintern agent from 1917 on, and was actually a founding member of The French Communist Party when he lived in Paris.
Credit to Vietnam, in that the mid-80’s they recognized that Communism just flat out didn’t work, and pretty much ditched it.