Yeah, the Laotians were just collateral damage, https://www.history.com/news/laos-most-bombed-country-vietnam-war Same for the Cambodians https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Bombing_of_Cambodia Few dispute that millions of Vietnamese were killed in our anti-communist adventure https://vietnamembassy-pyongyang.org/how-many-vietnamese-died-in-the-vietnam-war/ All for a war with no discernable positive effects in the end. Vietnam would gladly have been our friend and ally after WWII, we chose to help the French try to reinstate their murderous colonial rule https://www.britannica.com/place/Vietnam/World-War-II-and-independence. So, rather than live up to our professed values of self determination we pursued a paranoid and ultimately misbegotten campaign of anti-communism that cost millions of lives and yet stopped NO communist movements in South East Asia, left a legacy of unexploded ordinance that continues to kill and maim in the region, and of course, we do a lot of business with the "communist" government of Vietnam today, just as we would have had we left them the fuck alone to decide their own course. Pretty easy for me to think of that as a loss.