I would just like to add that 90% of the Agent Orange dropped on Vietnam during the Vietnam War was dropped on South Vietnam–the state we were ostensibly “defending” from northern “aggression.” That’s because what we were really defending was an unpopular puppet government from the righteous anger of its own citizens.

On that same note, I think alot of people forget that the Viet Cong was a insurgent group in South Vietnam, not a northern army sweeping in and imposing their rule on the rest of the country. The South Vietnamese governments the United States supported (and the actions of US armed forces) were so terrible that it was incredibly easily for the North Vietnamese to recruit Southerners to join the communist revolution. Not to mention that the US has been and continues to this day to support a number of governments in SE Asia that regularly violate the human rights the US always seems to be so concerned about simply because they are allies against the widening of the Chinese sphere of influence