> tried to keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam That is not what US internal diplomatic notes said at the time, not in modern interviews if McNamar

> tried to keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam That is not what US internal diplomatic notes said at the time, not in modern interviews if McNamara, Clark Clifford etc. The Vichy French colonialists, then the non-Vichy French, then the Americans fought to retain the Vietnamese colony in the south. The fight was against the National Liberation Front in the south - Buddhist monks, Paris educated professionals, peasants etc. The north had little involvement until mid-1968. Also French Indochina was one country until 1954, and the ceasefire lines were supposed to be temporary barring national elections, which the US opposed. There never was a "South Vietnam". > The South's people would have the same horrific history US policy during the Korean War was to fire on civilians, as happened at No Gun Ri. South Korea was under a series of dictatorships with a more horrific history than anything happening up north until the late 1970s up until the Gwangju massacre in 1980 in South Korea. The northern economy eclipsed the southern one as well. Things began changing in both countries in the 1980s and 1990s for a variety of internal and external reasons.