system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: what was the vietnam american war about and who won?

In my high school history class we never went over the vietnam war besides mentioning that it exists. I dont even know who won or what it was about. Kind of depressing. The most i know is america really doesnt like to talk about it because i guess it was kind of hard to justify the war?
gpt
The Cold War was between the Soviet Bloc/Warsaw Pact countries and the US/NATO countries. But because these two alliances were so powerful and had such large nuclear arsenals, they couldn't have an open, big, World War-style war because it would have probably meant the destruction of the planet. 

However, they still wanted to spread their influence, gain support, gain economic and political allies, wherever they could. Sometimes that resulted in wars where one of the major powers fought against a smaller group that supported the other side and that the other side supported, but which didn't have a super serious defense alliance with the other side that would trigger an all-out war.

The Vietnam War was one such conflict. The US was trying to support a pro-Western democratic regime while the Soviet Union and China were trying to support a pro-Communist regime. Ultimately the North Vietnamese (the Communist regime) won over the United States. This was not necessarily because the North Vietnamese army was better equipped or better trained than the US military, but heavily because the war was very unpopular in the US to begin with and then documents were published that basically showed the president and his department of defense were conducting other military operations in neighboring countries and lying about it to the media and Congress.