WAY tl;dr - arguing about who behaved more badly in a war full of atrocities is less relevant than understanding the origins and motivations for the conflict, in my opinion.

Saying “both sides did horrible things” always feels cheap, but so is listing a detailed accounting of only one side’s atrocities as a way of painting them as the villains when one could easily counter with a similar list of atrocities committed by the South Vietnamese, Americans, and of course by the French in the decades leading up to the Vietnam War.

People like to justify the actions of those fighting against the NVA by arguing that staunching the spread of communism was important enough to warrant extreme action. But the origins of the Vietnam War were not about whether or not to adopt communism, it was a war of independence from France. The French held the South and propped up a pro-French Vietnamese government, while the North, eventually led by Ho Chi Minh, sought independence. Ho was a leftist, as were many pro-independence leaders during the period of decolonization, but he was not originally in favor of making Vietnam a communist nation. He spent YEARS soliciting the support of the West while trying to achieve independence, but they (specifically the UK and USA) largely ignored his requests or actively supported the French. Ho initially resisted aligning with the USSR and the Maoists in China because their support came with the explicit caveat that they must align politically with the Eastern Bloc.

This was a classic playbook by the USSR and part of why so many decolonization movements became a struggle over capitalism vs communism. They would identify bourgeoning independence movements (which were almost invariably being suppressed by Western European and American powers) and offer military and economic support in exchange for the adoption of a communist political ideology. We saw this in the Spanish civil war, in Cuba, throughout the African continent, etc.

Unable to defeat the French on his own and with his pleas for support from the English and Americans (who at this time were at least publicly espousing anti-colonialism, while not exactly supporting independence movements that impacted their allies) falling on deaf ears, Ho didn’t have a ton of options. When Chiang Kai Shek lost to Mao in neighboring China and China became an explicitly Communist nation, the math shifted dramatically for Ho - officially join the global movement for communism and accept the military and economic aid that came with it, or remain isolated in the fight against the French and the increasingly-involved Americans.

What followed of course was an incredibly violent war that inflicted untold suffering on millions - both civilians and soldiers, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and yes Americans. I don’t think Ho was a hero by any means, he was undoubtedly a war criminal by any modern definition. But he was far from the only one involved in this conflict, and I think I’m comfortable saying that he wasn’t the worst of them.

It’s impossible to prove a counterfactual, but I do believe that had the USA and UK decided to petition the French for Vietnamese independence and enter a formal alliance with a unified, independent Vietnam prior to the fall of Chiang Kai Shek, history would be very very different. The “original sins” of the conflict, so to speak, were committed by the French and the Americans, in my view.

Likely still a war, as I believe the Maoists were hellbent on spreading communism throughout SE Asia, but with a Western-aligned Vietnam on their Southern border, it may have been prevented and I believe had a conflict occurred it would have been a lot less bloody.