>which was designed to protect rural villages from the VC
A foreign power from 10.000 miles away, no borders with a country, and no reason to be there, comes there with their army to "protect" the local population?
>A foreign power from 10.000 miles away, no borders with a country, and no reason to be there, comes there with their army to "protect" the local population?<
Trying to distill the 50 year old motives of a superpower can be a challenge in a thread, but consider it like this; if the intent of the US wasn't to protect the local population, wouldn't they have done more than this?
To address each point of your argument, distance doesn't really matter in the 20th Century, or earlier. Global actions occur, well, globally. To imply that a country can't have interests outside of it's border isn't a strong argument.
The Soviets and (Communist) Chinese were also operating in North Viet Nam so the idea was that the locals were being protected from those under the influence of an evil foreign power.
You can make up your own mind as to the legitimacy of this (you can probably guess what I think) but my comment is intended as a normative response to your question.
A foreign power from 10.000 miles away, no borders with a country, and no reason to be there, comes there with their army to "protect" the local population?