ABSTRACT
Call it La Sale Guerre, the Vietnam War, the American War, the First and Second Indochina Conflicts, as you will.1 The wars in question in that part of Southeast Asia still most easily called Indochina, or Indochine, ran their violent courses from the final days of the Second World War through to 1975. Of course, the whole region has been at war for some 2000 years of record. Conflicts have continued from 1975 through AD 2000, first with the victorious armies of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam flowing with unexpected ease to Phnom Penh and beyond, and most recently with the ever-vigorous Hmong of northern Laos resisting the alleged exploitation by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
