I've been reading about the American Revolutionary War, and I think we often have a one-sided narrative where the British are the oppressors and the Americans wanted freedom from all those insensitive nobles. But I'm starting to learn that there was quite a bit of opposition in Britain to the massive costs to the war, which their common people didn't fully support. There's any mischaracterization there, feel free to correct me.
Thinking about this, I saw parallels to modern wars, where we (USA) are now the aggressor. Do the Vietnamese see us the way we saw the British--a monolithic empire trying to assert control? Or do they understand how controversial the war was, and how many of us did not agree with what our government was doing? I suppose you could ask this about the wars in the Middle East, but I don't want to make this question more complicated than it already is.
This is a fairly complicated sort of question to tackle. The reason being that the Vietnam war to the Vietnamese understanding had begun before the US was even putting money in French hands. Since you are asking about the US specifically this makes it a little easier to understand but, as always, let me first provide you with a little bit of context for my explanation. Understanding the context surrounding your question will aid the clarity of my answer.
Prior to US intervention in the conflict the French had been fighting in Vietnam. Vietnam was, at the time, a part of the French Colony of Indochina. From 1945-1954 the French had been in constant conflict with Vietnamese guerrilla forces who saw their struggle as a war for independence. This is where the first crucial piece of context for your question comes in. The Vietnamese saw their war as a war for independence. Ho Chi Minh, the leader and later only titular leader of the Vietnamese resistance, identified his nation's struggle with that of the United States.
Ho Chi Minh had sent a letter and telegram to Harry S. Truman that indicated as much. In these communications Ho Chi Minh had sought after Truman in an effort to bring US intervention into the conflict to bring about independence and reconstruction. He had appealed to a speech that Truman had made in vigorous support of self-determination. Ho Chi Minh would again identify his people with the US plight during the revolution in a September of 1945 where he began by reading the opening to the Declaration of Independence and went on to use it to contrast these ideals with their current state.
Indeed the Vietnamese identified with our revolution, but did they understand how the American public felt about the war?
For the average Vietnamese person, the US was seen as yet another foreign invader. It was confounding to some that the US had supported the French at a time when the US was criticizing other world powers for still owning colonies. That confusion only grew when the US military started putting boots on the ground in Vietnam. For the Vietnamese, Americans had come to be akin to another colonial master.
Ho Chi Minh or rather Le Duan knew best about how the Americans felt about the war. It is safe to say that the party leadership fully understood how the Americans felt. They had kept a pulse on the throat of the nation throughout the entire war. It was their chief concern to wear down the American public in a prolonged and bloody conflict. They knew about our initial determination and were also keen to exploit the height of the anti-war movement in 1969. The party elites were very aware of how controversial the war was and how the American public increasingly grew angry about it. The fact that so many people disagreed with the government served as a strategic advantage for the Vietnamese. You can see the results of incidents like the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre by the reactions of people back home.
But did the average Vietnamese person understand us? No. The South Vietnamese would have had a better understanding of the American view of the war due to their alliance. The people of the North would have had a much harder time even accessing information on the Americans. The United States had engaged in heavy bombing of civilian targets in North Vietnam in several bombing campaigns from 1962-1973 almost non-stop. These bombing campaigns caused immense damage to infrastructure and civilian populations. Electricity had to be rationed in most cases. Even without the bombing, many Vietnamese had never even seen a TV.
There was also the fact that the North Vietnamese had a very effective propaganda system in place. This combined with the fact that the literacy rate in Vietnam by year 1960 was around 64%^(*), meant the average citizen had no chance of knowing what was going on in the US. It was like being in a complete information black out. There were scarce resources to learn about the US and even then they had to contend with the state propaganda machine.
It is safe to say that while party elites were well aware of how the US populace felt about the war. The average citizen would not begin to learn until well after the end of the conflict.
*A note on this statistic. This was the literacy rate of the Republic of Vietnam as collected by UNESCO. There is no data on North Vietnamese literacy rates at the time.
"The Vietnam War" a documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. (Features many interviews with North Vietnamese soldiers, historians, and citizens.)
The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien
The Sorrows of War, by Bao Ninh
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen (Historical Ficton, contains interesting insights from a Vietnamese author born in a refugee camp and raised by war refugees.)
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I suppose you could ask this about the wars in the Middle East, but I don't want to make this question more complicated than it already is.
Please bear in mind that we have a 20-year rule on this sub in order to avoid discussion of modern politics. Questions about Vietnam and the Gulf War are fine, but we would have removed this thread if it asked about the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Yemen.