If American soldiers in Vietnam were *all* the bloodthirsty genocidal babykillers that they're now accused of being (by "communists") then the war would have never ended. They would have kept fighting just for the love of killing.
They would have become freebooters and formed mercenary companies and re-invaded even after the official war ended, like the settlers did in Rhodesia.
The US military was defeated by two factors. It took the bravery and tenacity of the Vietnamese people to keep fighting and the bravery and dedication of American conscripts to refuse to fight.
Everything is influenced by internal and external contradictions. It's a deviation to ignore one or the other factor.
You can say that's chauvanism or not staying in my lane or "centering Americans" but the fact is enough of the 1960s US military was not comprised of white babykillers.
At the time the antiwar movement and the GI's were on the same side. The antagonism that supposedly existed between the groups was a myth invented in the 1980s by fascists who wanted to create a "Stab in the back" legend to explain why the war was lost.
A few people suggested "Sir! No Sir!" and I watched it and it explains this lost history.
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