History isn't written so much by the "winners" as "the people left in charge after the war". If the US and its South Vietnamese allies had won the war, the post

History isn't written so much by the "winners" as "the people left in charge after the war". If the US and its South Vietnamese allies had won the war, the post-war characterisation of certain figures, philosophies and motivations in Vietnam would have been very different. Vietnam didn't however, win the war decisively enough to force a change of government to the US, and it suited the politicians still in charge of the US to downplay how important preventing communism from spreading in southeast Asia had once been and focus on how Cold War strategy switched to different theatres and approaches.