The American involvement in Vietnam
"In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech called "Beyond Vietnam", in which he stated:
"They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence -- in 1945 -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them.
Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives."
"In 1950 the French gave up their effort to maintain direct control over Vietnam and transferred power to Bao Dai. The US recognized Bao Dai, but the Vietnamese people did not; he was generally a puppet of the French.
"In 1954 President Eisenhower wrote:
"I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held at the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather then Chief of State Bao Dai."