I'll see about getting one more person.

[quote=@Copperpen]
I should have kept up with this a lot more, oh dear. 

In any case, I probably know very little about Vietnam- my relatives are European and therefore were more involved in avoiding communist secret police, and even the compulsory service didn't send them off to any theaters. I'll do some research for the RP, definitely.
[/quote]
-Vietnam was a cluster-crap that makes the Ukrainian civil war look simple and easily resolved. But in [i]this thing[/i] even direct military intervention by major global powers just seemed to make the situation worse.
>But for the most part, if they shot at you, they were either enemy, or [i]really dumb friendlies[/i].

General US strategy/goal was to make sure Vietnam was "anything but a communist state" as per the policy of containment
-US Army approach to victory was to seek a series of decisive victories (according to paper), and attrition.
-USMC's approach was to generally just teach the locals how to handle the shit that was very obviously going to roll their way the moment they pulled out (see also: Sino-Vietnam war and Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to upset Pol Pot)
+Both approaches had problems, the Army approach tended to alienate the villagers, and the marine approach tended to accidentally arm and train the insurgents. While both had to ignore whatever corruption went-on in the provisional government of southern Vietnam.

Vietnam's goal was to develop and maintain its soveriegnty. [i]Unification would be nice, too.[/i]
-Viet Cong wanted all foriegners out. Communist leanings, but mostly they just wanted the military occupation and corruption to end.
-NVA was much the same, but heavy propoganda that capitalism is inherently corrupt and communism is inherently good.
-ARVN wanted to give democracy a chance
-RTA wanted to maintain their monarchy for the glory of their emperor and USA #1 (because we gave them a bunch of tanks 'n stuff, nothing sez "I wub you long time" like a few boatloads of free tanks, [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0eLiA4wXs]they still use them[/url])
-Cambodia was a corrupt genocidal opium-smoking dictatorship, [i]but US-Cambodian relations were still a better love story than Twighlight[/i].

Russia and China saw this chunk of SE Asia as "Korean-war, second act" with a very strong chance of winning valuable allies.
-Both saw everyone else as Imperial expansionists, leading to Sino-Soviet tensions to come to a head around 1968. In 1972 China tried annexing Vietnam kinda like what happened to Tibet... except Vietnamese people aren't pacifist-pushovers.