Being a democracy, America is was never monolithic in any of its wars. Anyone here remember the Civil War (Ooops, the 'War Between the States' for my southern in-laws).
He also got wrong that domino theory bit. If the theory worked, than after Burma we'd have lost the Phillipines, Japan, then hopefully California (well, maybe one out of three was true). But it didn't happen because the theory was bogus. In conflicts you pick defensive positions and Vietnam was not one of the best places to defend.
But we did defend there for the better part of two decades and Snow overlooks the biggest myth-- the idea that our efforts were wasted. They weren't because our goal was (or was supposed to have been) containment, not conquest. We contained communism (or at least slowed it down a lot) enough for Reagan to finish it off in the '80's. I'd call it a successful Fabian defense.
I've tried to make this point to people for decades. All the men we lost were lost in a cause just as important as WWII. Communism made the Nazis look like amateurs when it came to slaughtering people. They saved us from decades of a new Dark Ages.
Write Mr. Snow an e-mail and tell him you just read his column. Make sure you point this out to him. If he is half the journalist I think he is, he will mull your comments over and file them away in his memory banks.
The next time he has the opportunity to write about the Viet Nam war he will address this.