&#x27;North&#x27; Vietnamese? The partition is a colonial construct.<p>And what &quot;battle&quot; did the US win? As a military exercise it was a debacle from start to finish (much like our more recent efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan). Wrong war, wrong reason, wrong plan, incompetently executed (strategically).<p>And the comparison with &#x27;Spartans&#x27; is off too. The Spartans were pretty weird (not just by our standards, but by contemporary standards too) and their society was entirely wrapped around military tradition. Despite centuries of foreign occupation and resistance, Vietnamese culture was and is basically Confucian (in which the soldier is pretty much the bottom of the totem pole).