Lonewolf - yet the US didn't act to contain communism in neighbouring Laos.
Soviet expansionism post WW2 was quite clear - my point is that the 'fear' of Communism was overblown in order to deal with that expansionism. Most US voters wouldn't have cared about minor Asian countries if they hadn't had the spectre of world communism created to give the politicians the money and power to go to war or prop up puppet governments halfway across the world.
It seems like Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist rather than a communist but only the communists would support him to get rid of the French.
Everything after that was a total disaster as McNamara seems to acknowledge.