August 18 is the anniversary of Operation Starlite in 1965. It was the first major offensive attack on North Vietnam from the imperialist forces in South Vietnam. The battle lasted for days, and hundreds were killed on both sides.

This marked the official beginning of a decades long war that would kill millions of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian people The vast majority of them civilians. The US dropped more bombs on Laos alone than all the ordinance expended in World War II. These bombs are still killing people to this day. During the war, the fact that Laos was attacked at all was concealed from the American people.

The war started because US was concerned with communist ideology spreading, and sought to forcibly stop it at gunpoint. Vietnam was recently liberated from French colonial rule, and was in turmoil. The Americans knew that if there were an election in Vietnam, the communists would win by a landslide. In order to prevent such an election from happening, they falsely claimed that the North Vietnamese had attacked them in International Waters, and deployed troops to prop up the illegitimate and dictatorial South Vietnamese government.

Millions of people were murdered due to the US regime’s dogmatic hatred of communism.