This... May 26, 2014

[JackRiddler]

27. You answer your own question.

, the Eisenhower administration was not interested in the 1956 elections

Why was that? Because the side they preferred would have lost. So they destroyed the peace and put the country and region through another 20 years of even more horrific war, using the geostrategic garnish you serve up yourself as their excuse. The issue, then as now, was to enrich the military-industrial complex that diagnosed non-existent threats and created the problems it pretended to combat. A self-licking ice cream cone.

It was not the business of the United States government to interfere in the outcome of Vietnam's struggle for independence. Absolute zero legitimacy on behalf of either side. But the choice was made on behalf of continuing the historic crimes of European imperialism, and to do so on a genocidal scale, killing millions.

That is also what I should have answered to your last set of questions: regardless of the answers (could Ho be trusted, blah blah blah), it was not U.S. business to interfere! And for the people actually there, nothing could possibly be improved through a U.S. military intervention. Everything was made much worse.

That's reality, not one of your what-ifs -- which I reject, obviously: I'll pick my own what-ifs if I want them. Like, what if, instead of supporting French atrocity, the U.S. had taken up Ho Chi Minh's desire to be a nationalist ally to the America, rather than a communist enemy?