OzOne wrote
I suppose it depends on your point of view. I view it as a continuation
of
the war between NV and the French dating from the partition of the
country
after WWII. ....

Not really.

Of course, I was looking at the chain of events from a US perspective
....It wasn't a war until we got involved... ;-)

We were involved in WW2 when Ho & co helped rescue US airmen and later when
Ho begged Truman and Ike to help him keep France out. Ho'd seen both western
and communist "democracies" and knew that people lived better in the former.
OTOH we had left his country to France. So after beating France they
decided to briefly partition the country north and south, then after a time
let the people choose in a reunification election. Ike saw the opportunity
to influence that choice by pouring assistance into the south so that, come
elections, the south would be rich and the north still poor. Might have
worked except that Diem and the old French collaborators diverted all our
aid into personal accounts and set up a Catholic regime similar to Saddams
baathists (remember buddists burning?). Ike left that problem for JFK who
dawdled til it was too late for Ike's plan to work. There was little or no
fighting during that period (except in the south when villages tried to
elect non-catholic leaders) because both sides assumed they'd win the
election.