I agree with you, and while I can't begin to excuse what happened there, the soldiers who committed those atrocities:
*never should have been there in the first place. The Domino Theory was moronic and, apart from making certain arms deal...err, military goods suppliers very, very rich (Grumman et al.), the war accomplished nothing for the West -- just loads of good, dead kids on both sides.
*were probably so fucked in the head from fighting the VC, who were so truly cruel and barbaric as to make any American crime seem almost tame in comparison, that they really were effectively brainwashed and so paranoid as to see a VC in ALL Vietnamese. Frankly, I cannot blame them on that count; if you've ever seen "Apocalypse Now," you'd know even the most innocent-looking young schoolteacher can bomb men and equipment before anyone could blink. (Aye, it's a movie, but that sort of thing happened.)
*I ... eh. I'm fresh out. It shouldn't have happened. But it was war, and far more had happens in time of war than not. Inter arma enim silent leges.
The US intentions were correct.
To protect South Vietnam from North Vietnamese Communist invasion.
It worked in Korea and they believed they could accomplish the same in Vietnam. Look at South Korea, a thriving capitalist country, South Vietnam could have been the same.
And no, the Domino theory was correct, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam were and most still are socialist states. The only exception was Thailand and they were fighting communist terrorists in the jungles, their country could have fallen to communists as well. Thailand is now thriving, and look at the shithole socialist and communist neighbours surrounding them.
Politicians threw the war away, if they let the military do their job, the North Vietnamese would have been crushed.
The Fall of Saigon was a horrific disaster, the people were sent to concentration camps, lost their property and lost everything.
