Don't you think American bombs and agent orange terrorized Vietnamese civilians?The NVA and VC terrorized the civilian population of the RVN. Look at what they did in Hue during their occupation for example. Torture and mass executions galore. They expected the South Vietnamese citizens to rise up in support of them and instead the civilians either supported the government forces or stayed neutral. The VC were destroyed in the in the Tet Offensive and it took the NVA years and billions of dollars of Soviet aid to recover.