Explanation: The US got involved in the Vietnam War after France’s withdrawal. While France’s intention was to maintain colonial control over Vietnam (a position of theirs we had opposed in several of their other colonies), in Vietnam our involvement was over the ever-classic ‘red scare’. North Vietnam was led by an extremely popular Communist by the name of Ho Chi Minh, and US foreign policy at the time was to oppose Communist governments wherever and whenever it could.

After an attempt at a deal at national reconciliation elections fell through due to the mutual antagonism of the USA and USSR (thanks for treating the little guys as pawns, superpowers, this will go swell), the USA supported the efforts of the appointed Prime Minister of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, to become, effectively, dictator of South Vietnam. We supported this southern dictatorship, which did not improve after Diem was couped, through the next ~20 years of show elections and failures of governance, while simultaneously attempting to degrade the single-party state of North Vietnam.

It didn’t go well. For anyone. Over the two decades, ~2 million Vietnamese died in this civil war, countless atrocities were performed, including by US troops after our military got directly involved in the 60s, a fucking terror bombing campaign was launched by the USA (and supported by the American administration even after it became apparent that it was no more effective than previous terror bombing campaigns in WW2), and millions of American troops, many of whom were conscripts, returned home disillusioned by being thrown into the senseless defense of a brutal dictatorship, and traumatized.

… it was possibly not a great fucking idea.