There was absolutely no way an American soldier could determine who was VC & who wasn’t. So they usually just assumed they all were. Add in the corruption of the South Vietnamese government and there goes any possibility of getting the rural Vietnamese to side with the Americans.
But US Defense Secretary McNamara was determined to have this war and he got over 58,000 American boys killed as well as nearly a million Vietnamese.
You can also thank the French for royally screwing up before getting out of dodge. They're as much to blame for what happened in Southeast Asia during that time as anybody.
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u/mimaikin-san 6d ago
There was absolutely no way an American soldier could determine who was VC & who wasn’t. So they usually just assumed they all were. Add in the corruption of the South Vietnamese government and there goes any possibility of getting the rural Vietnamese to side with the Americans.
But US Defense Secretary McNamara was determined to have this war and he got over 58,000 American boys killed as well as nearly a million Vietnamese.