Vietnam resisted the business model.

That is the actual, specific, historically grounded reason for the war.

Not communist ideology spreading across Southeast Asia.

Not the security of American citizens.

Not the freedom of the Vietnamese people, for whom the US-backed regime in Saigon was itself a series of military dictatorships.

Vietnam had a leadership that intended to make decisions about Vietnam's resources and Vietnam's political future without checking with Washington first.

That is the threat.

Not the ideology. The independence.

The ideology was the available vocabulary for describing the threat in terms the American public would support.

The actual threat was the precedent.

A poor country successfully charting its own course was not just a loss in Vietnam.

It was an advertisement to every other poor country that the business model could be refused.

That is what they were trying to bomb into submission.

Not communism.

The idea that refusal was possible.

Vietnam proved it was.

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