Which basically makes the situation almost identical to what existed in Korea. There, the South was essentially a Fascist Dictatorship (and an often turbulent one at that) well up until the late 1980s. That doesn't, however, mean that the Kims would have been a preferable alternative. To the contrary, history has seen the South become a thriving First World economy and liberal democratic regime, where the North has become a tyrannical international joke. Ultimately, much the same was the case in Vietnam. The South was a mess, sure. However, that ultimately had just as much to do with our counter-productive meddling, and insistence on fighting a half-felt, defensive, and reactionary war, as it did anything else. Frankly, even with those failings, if we had maintained our air support, and simply beat the NVA back every time they made a move, there was really no reason why the government of South Vietnam could not have survived, potentially even prospered, as Korea did. In any case, none of the above makes the North under Ho Chi Minh the "good guys" of this story, as the popular Left so often wants to claim. The entire "take that, you deserved it!" attitude the popular Left so often wants to take towards the eventual outcome of the conflict is nothing less than outright disgusting. Simply speaking, everything the South was guilty of, the North was and is guilty of as well, only worse. Absolutely nothing excuses our allowing the Vietnamese people to fall and languish under a tyrannical Communist government in Third World poverty for the last fifty years. We failed the people of Vietnam. That's really all there is to it.
eace