Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
LOL! The majority of the Vietnamese people just wanted to be left the fvck alone and for people from both sides to stop killing them.

The idea that the VC were a popular local guerilla army is a myth. These people used to have to brutalise, murder and intimidate in order to get the help of the local population. That is not 'support' in any sense.
Nothing you have said there is inconsistent with my post. But you seem to have missed the most important part, so I will highlight it for you again:

the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people were either pro-VC or if forced to choose between the Americans and their puppet government (which is exactly what Diem was) would have chosen the VC simply because they were Vietnamese

There was virtually no support for Diem, and therefore for the Americans, amongst the peasantry while the idea of a reunified Vietnam free from foreign influence carried some weight. The VC were no angels, but they were also not an utterly corrupt set of elitists backed by a foreign power.