LogFAQs > #932263787

coh posted...

North Vietnam was the aggressor and we were fighting on behalf of the South, yet that made us the bad guy.

I don't get it.

In accordance with the Geneva Accords of 1954, Vietnam was temporarily divided into the Republic of Vietnam(led by Ho Chih Minh and the communist party a.k.a. North Vietnam) and the State of Vietnam(supposedly led by the Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai a.k.a. South Vietnam). This division was to exist only until 1956, when general elections were to be held to elect a unified government. However, the South, under the control of Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to abide by the convention(with the encouragement and support of the U.S. under President Eisenhower). This was likely partly because Ho Chih Minh was regarded as a national hero for defeating the hated French and thus would have undoubtedly won the elections. Diem was a Catholic who promoted his fellow Catholics and persecuted the country's Buddhist majority, so he was highly unpopular and needed to rig a referendum to get Bao Dai out of the picture(who, as a former French puppet, was also undoubtedly unpopular).
The division was entirely artificial to begin with and the South's government was very unpopular(and dictatorial) from the get-go.