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I really don't see why you thought that what you posted was a response to what I said. I quite clearly stated that the argument that this was "self-defense" in any way was ridiculous, and that the argument was that we didn't like their style of government.
Probably most readers are aware that the justification for the U.S. attack on the civilian population of Indochina given by the warmongers and liberal defenders was the need to stop "Communism".
On the other hand I specifically called for us to reject the principle of allowing aggressive imperialists to justify their actions by attempting to redefine the debate ("self-defense", as I emphasized, cannot simply be altered to mean whatever one says it means, even if one really wants to); further, I said it was not relevant that the motivators and justifiers of policy believed their own rhetoric about why they did and supported what they did.
Similarly, if 100% of U.S. policymakers and defenders justified the war in Indochina on the argument that we were anticipatorily defending ourselves from a Martian invasion, and even in 100% of them were 100% convinced that a Martian invasion was imminent and that their policies would lead to less chance of a Martian invasion, it's still nonsense.
