<< All those Vietnamese who died so willingly weren't dying for communism. They could have given a damn less about Moscow, or economic theory. They were dying for Vietnam and their nationalism. >>
I'm not so sure how true that is, JS. I think you'd find that Ho Chi Minh was probably a lot more flexible on doctrine than some of the other revolutionary Communist leaders, and that over the years, his policies towards the bourgeoisie, the small businessmen and small landowners, varied according to the overall fortunes of the Revolution. At times, these elements were welcomed into the Party and later into the National Liberation Front and at times they were more or less discouraged, depending on how much pressure Ho was experiencing from his left to implement land reform programs which sometimes were left on the back burner for base-broadening purposes. This waxing and waning of accommodation for the bourgeoisie is not (IMHO) so much an indication of nationalist leanings, as an indication of the pragmatism of Uncle Ho.
Certainly the backbone of the Revolution and the War of National Liberation was the front-line cadres of Party men and women who set a standard of determination and self-sacrifice that remains unequalled to this day. Those cadres were formed and trained by the Party, and I would expect that, whatever problems in recruiting standards had existed in pre-WWII days due to base-broadening principles, had by the mid-Sixties been resolved in favour of Party discipline and Party indoctrination. I won't deny the contribution of purely nationalist and other non-Communist sentiment to Vietnam's defeat of America, but to claim that Communism had nothing to do with it is just not the case.