Ho Chi Minh himself was a fan of the US. He spent some good time in the states though what he really did there is clouded in mystery. The first sentence of the Vietnamese declaration of independence is copied, verbatim, from the American one, generally speaking the anti-colonial attitude and liberalism where up his alley and back in the days the US politicians hadn’t yet really found their identity as imperialist swine… this was some 20 years before WWII.
Oh and he worked for a time for Auguste Escoffier.
Had the Yanks continued to antagonise Vietnam after the war the whole thing would probably look quite differently, also, if Vietnam was an island located in the Caribbeans. But having a country as ally there that really doesn’t like Chinese imperialism is something US hawks like so they were willing to overlook the fact that the local regime was state capitalist instead of fascist.
Yeah, Vietnam wrecked our anti-imperialist cred that we cultivated after WW2. While our actions in Latin America have always been questionable at best, we were actually major supporters of international independence movements against our own nominal allies in Europe, and for that reason, maintained a strong anti-imperialist reputation all throughout the 50s.
Not that this reputation wasn’t tarnished with very not-anti-imperialist involvement in some cases - Operation Ajax coming to mind for an example outside of Latin America - but that it also wasn’t completely unwarranted - such as our involvement in pressuring the UK during the Suez Canal Crisis, or the fact that we ran interference for Moroccan independence groups against France, or our support for Indonesian independence against the Netherlands.
All of that, gone in a metaphorical instant, washed away in a tide of blood and war crimes.
