Thanks, Wikipedia.
The Vietnam War occurred from 1959 to 1975. It was the United States' naked aggression against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and was conducted by American Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy (who was in the process of cutting back troops when he was killed), Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
The war was fought between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam headed by Presidents Ho Chi Minh (1945-1969) and Le Duan (1969-1986) and the United States' collaborationist regime called the Republic of Vietnam which consisted of war criminals who collaborated with both the French and Japanese colonialists.
It ended with the defeat of the Americans and their quislings.
A total of 15 million tons of ammunition was used on the Vietnamese people by the American invaders and the bombs that dropped on the country exceeded those dropped for the whole of World War II.
The American army also poisoned Vietnam with chemicals and diseases, the effects of which torment the Vietnamese people until today.
About 6.5 million people died, 1.5 million of which were soldiers in combat.
Ho Chi Minh, who liberated Vietnam from French and Japanese colonialism in 1945, and set up the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, was initially friends with the Americans.
Ho was a big fan of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt, as well as the Soviet Union's founder President Vladimir Ulyanov or Lenin and China's first Communist President Mao Zedong.
Ho was sorely let down by the Americans when President Harry Truman sided with France in having Vietnam partitioned into North Vietnam, headed by Ho, and South Vietnam, headed by the French-backed and discredited Vietnamese monarch Emperor Bao Dai.
The division, orchestrated by the United Nations, was supposed to be temporary, and elections were to be held on both sides of the divide within a year in 1955.
Both the French and Americans had gauged popular support and found that Ho had the backing of the majority in the southern zone.
This did not look good for the West, which detested Socialists and Communists outside their borders.
In defiance of the United Nations plan, the French and Americans made the division of Vietnam permanent.
The southern zone was christened the independent Republic of Vietnam and given independence by the Americans and French.
Bao Dai was replaced by yet another French and Japanese collaborator Ngo Dinh Diem, an aristocrat of the Emperor's court.
Ho created an autonomous government in the southern zone called the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam or Vietcong in short.
It was headed by the non-Communist Nguyen Huu Tho and the Communist Nguyen Van Linh, who would become Vietnam's third President in 1986.
Linh was also called the Vietnamese Mikhail Gorbachev because he relaxed Le Duan's harsh command economy upon coming to power after his mentor's death.
The forces of Tho and Linh had the support of the majority of South Vietnamese and outsmarted the American occupation forces and their puppets most of the time.
The occupation forces and their collaborators resorted to the all-too-familiar war crimes of torture, murder and rape to enforce their rule.
Bao Dai's and Diem's successors General Nguyen Khanh and General Nguyen Van Thieu indulged in rape and murder on a large scale.
The war gradually became a burden on the American military-industrial complex and the economy.
It resulted in mass protests by peace-loving citizens, who were later joined by returning soldiers who had become disillusioned with the insanity of the war.
The Americans and their puppets surrendered on April 30, 1975 to Vietnamese President Le Duan.
Vietnam's victory owed not only to its superior military strategies but also assistance from China, North Korea and the Soviet Union.
Sadly, China abandoned Vietnam when American President Richard Nixon and Chinese President Mao Zedong met in 1972.
The American invaders were aided by South Koreans, Taiwanese, Australians, Thais, Filipinos, New Zealanders and British.
