Bill, thanks.

The US generally took an approach of non-involvement in the issue of Vietnamese and French conflict, and in doing so supported French colonialism. America became less and less inclined to support Ho Chi Min due to his Communist affiliation yet at the same time American analysts could not draw any link between Ho Chi Minh and Moscow, writing that Ho Chi Minh did not seem to be following any directive from Moscow and that the policies of Ho Chi Minh did not correlate with Russian policy.

Nowhere did the coming of Americans, in the case a mere handful of them, mean so much to a people as it did to the population of northern Indo-China. To Annamites, our coming was the symbol of liberation not from the Japanese occupation but from decades of French colonial rule. For the Annamite government considered the United States the principal champion of the rights of small peoples, guaranteed so promisingly by the United Nations conferences... Our prowess in the war, our vast production abilities, our progressiveness in technical and social fields- all were known by the Annamites, to a surprising degree. In their blueprint for self-government they envisaged American trade bringing them peacetime products.

American technicians to help then industrialize Vietnam, American consulates in the political, medical and social sciences. Essentially, they feel that the French did not develop the resources of the country for the benefit of the people themselves, and in their own planning have emphasized their intention to throw Vietnam open to American commercial penetration. As a matter of practical preference they would like to see the economy of Vietnam geared to our own if that were possible or desirable to us. Above all they want the good will of the American people and our government. From the top of the Annamite leadership to the bottom of the social scale in Tonkin, every person made a visible effort to please American officers and men. They offered courtesies and simple gestures of friendship at every opportunity.

The C.B.I. patch on the shoulder of an American was his ticket to a warm welcome and good treatment... Annamites asked for all sorts of advice-how to run a newspaper, how to repair and operate machinery, how to run a street-cleaning department most efficiently-even though they were managing quite well indeed in operating utilities and other physical functions of government. They inquired about our schools, our courts, our elections, about the workings of both houses of the Congress. They seemed to feel that every American contained within himself all the virtues and accomplishments of the nation they wanted most to emulate...
- Arthur Hale, U.S. Information Agency 1945 (not declassified until 1972)

Viet-Minh, as its first move after seizure of the government, sought a united front against French imperialism... Frenchmen think that by labeling Viet-Minh "Communist," they have summed up the situation to the disadvantage of the Vietnam government. There is considerable communist influence in Viet-Minh... The national salute is very nearly the raised right arm salute of the communists. Posters, banners, have been adapted from Western leftist art... But at the same time there is ample evidence of an equally strong influence from the United States... Policy statements and declarations by the government are obvious imitations of American techniques of democratic government. In short, the Viet-Minh leadership seems to have used communist methods of appeal to arouse the masses behind a program for an independent democracy...
- Arthur Hale, U.S. Information Agency 1945 (not declassified until 1972)

It was clear that the Vietnamese people wanted freedom from foreign intervention.

What followed between the region of South East Asia and Western powers was an unnecessary escalation of conflict.  Western powers, including the United States, feared Communism and they also felt that non-Western people were not adequate to govern themselves and certainly not to be trusted with important resources and geographic regions. It was felt that it was important to keep economically and militarily strategic locations under Western authority. Had the United States or France given support to Ho Chi Minh and supported the right of Vietnam to self determination at any time up to this point, it is very likely that Vietnam would never have pursued Communism. The only reason that the Vietnamese did was because the Communists were the only ones who were supporting Vietnam's goal of independence.

In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech called "Beyond Vietnam", in which he stated: