I don't quite disagree with you, but I'm one of those who usually runs with the idea that if the congress hasn't found the balls to declare "literal" war against a nation, the government of the United States has no actual enemies on behalf of whom aid and comfort might be given. We're not at "war" and haven't been for about three generations. Treason requires enemies and the congress never bothered to actually defined any after WWII. 

Might be why out honored services haven't been able to outright win against anyone since then. They weren't given an actual enemy to defeat, but instead just ordered about the globe with some ambiguous mission to defend interests.

Fonda was before my time... well, technically I was alive however my biggest concern was chasing Susie Segerstrom around the playground.

I have read about what fonda did and agree, it was reprehensible.  That does not aliviate the responsibility of the US federal governments reprehensible behavior toward Vietnam.  If you're going to go to war, at least have the fucking balls to say so. 

The history of ho chi min is quite interesting.  In point of fact, he pleaded for Vietnamese independance from France long before he joined up with the commies.  He was ignored by former colonies who should have been on his side (I'm looking at you, unka sam).  Finding no sympathy or allies there, he turned toward those who would help him;  the soviet union.

If we're going to be the good guys, then we need to act like the good guys.  When unka sam behaves like a two bit dime store thug, there are going to be consequences.

As it turns out, a better literal translation of his words would have been, ‘We will be present when you are buried.’ This was actually a pretty common saying in Soviet Russia. What Khrushchev really meant was, ‘We will outlast you.’ It was just the usual ‘communism is better than capitalism’ posturing that went on all the time in the Cold War, but thanks to misinterpretations...Americans thought Khrushchev was threatening to literally bury us in the rubble of a nuclear attack.”

I grew up in the 1950s, when we practiced “duck and cover” drills at school and families were building fallout shelters in their back yards in the hopes of surviving the expected nuclear showdown with Russia. 

I tend to think the modern take on Khrushchev’s most (in)famous quote overlooks something. 

In 1956, the nuclear arms race and the threat of nuclear war were real and taken very seriously. 

“We shall be present at your funeral” or “We shall outlive you” or any of the other “better” translations that are now suggested would probably have sounded just as hostile and threatening to most Americans.

So the fact that “We will bury you” may have been a mistranslation, misquote or misunderstanding, while interesting, may also be moot. 

The concern caused by Khrushchev’s use of the words “My vas pokhoronim” would likely have been the same in the US regardless of the translation.

Of course, six years later, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, we found out Khrushchev didn’t actually have the sharries to start a nuclear war with the U.S.

He backed down after President John F. Kennedy threatened to push the button first if the Soviets refused to remove the nuclear missiles they had secretly shipped to Cuba.

I don’t know what Kennedy said to Khrushchev behind the scenes during that high stakes game of Cold War brinksmanship. 

But I suspect it might have been something along the lines of “We will bury you.”