In addition, there are two sides to this story. 1) A misguided US Military found ways to kill innocent people. 2) The Vietnam Military found a way to defend themselves without killing anyone. Which side should we communicate as being more clever?
The North was the exact opposite of innocent. They ended up with even more blood on their hands than the Americans (and French and British) that should have never been there.
In the big picture, the US military ordered the killing of North Vietnamese soldiers that were part of a plan to see South Vietnam conquered by any means necessary so a Communist regime could be installed across the whole of Vietnam. The North was an extraordinarily brutal regime, hell bent on military conquest, and murdering anyone that tried to stop them from achieving the acquisition of the South under their ideology. How about we not pretend they were innocent, passive, peaceful, freedom loving peoples that just wanted a unified progressive democracy for all of Vietnam.
It was little different from what happened in Korea, except thankfully the US stopped the North from slaughtering South Korea and installing a dictatorship there.
"On 6 March 1946, Ho signed an agreement allowing French forces to replace Nationalist Chinese forces, in exchange for French recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a "free" republic within the French Union, with the specifics of such recognition to be determined by future negotiation. The French landed in Hanoi by March 1946 and in November of that year they ousted the Viet Minh from the city. British forces departed on 26 March 1946, leaving Vietnam in the hands of the French."
Vietnam belongs to the vietnamese people. There would be no "South" if vietnam was allowed to rule itself.
To stop communism, misguided US leaders decided killing several million innocent people was justified. These leaders should be held responsible for the death of US soldiers in vietnam. It is tragic that these US leaders were not charged with war crimes like the Nazis.