"There It Is": Narratives of the Vietnam War. Tom Burns

that led to the assassination of Diem and his brother Nhu is, according to Anthony Short, “probably the most painful and controversial episode of the Vietnam War,” but was also “arguably, something that was inherent in the logic of US intervention.”1

In all fairness, Diem’s obstacles to governing were formidable: war lords and competing religious sects, a powerful bandit organization (Binh Xuyen), the influx of nearly a million refugees to southern Vietnam from the north, coup factions within his own army, and northern Viet Minh cadres left behind in the south after the division of the country that were bent on inspiring insurrection. Diem took steps to deal with these problems and solidify his position in accordance with the following time-table. On June 18, 1954, he became Prime Minister of South Vietnam. The exodus of people from the north, mainly Catholics, with the aid of the US Navy, to South Vietnam began the same year, and numbered nearly a million people, furnishing Diem with a ready-made anti-Communist constituency in the south.2 US policymakers affirmed support for his regime while encouraging him to seek a broader basis of political support and to establish more democratic institutions.3 Diem gained control of the military by suppressing the rebellion of his Chief of Staff, General Hinh,4 and began to consolidate his political power by appointing members of his family to the cabinet. He agreed to the needed reforms stipulated in a letter from President Eisenhower (October 24, 1954) as a pre-condition to American aid,5 all of which went directly to Saigon. Diem launched the first of a series of agricultural reform measures (February 1955), but they resulted in more inequalities than before and created unrest among the peasants, which the Communist opposition exploited to its advantage.6

Diem’s forces did battle with the Binh Xuyen and the sects (March-May 1955)—action that is portrayed in two of the novels examined in Chapter One.7 Although Secretary of State Dulles and General Collins discussed replacing Diem, his champion Edward Landsdale urged the embassy to continue supporting him. The French, British, and Americans held talks in Paris (May 7-13, 1955), agreeing to support Diem’s government but expressing the wish to see it more representative. The following day, Diem declared that he was not bound by decisions made at conferences in which he had not participated.8 He launched, however, a successful offensive against the Hoa Hao sect (June 1955) and broke its resistance. Pham Van Dong, the foreign minister of North Vietnam, proposed consultations with the south to prepare for the nationwide elections stipulated by the Geneva Accords for July 1956. Diem replied in a broadcast (July 6, 1955) that since the accords were not signed, South Vietnam was not bound by them.9

The US leadership, including President Eisenhower, did not believe that if Ngo Dinh Diem ran he could defeat Ho Chi Minh, who was popularly perceived as the national liberator from foreign rule, both Japanese and French. For his part, Senator John F. Kennedy declared that free elections could not be held, for the results would inevitably be stacked against the South.10 Life magazine, published by the staunchly anti-Communist Catholics Henry and Claire Booth Luce, gave credence to the American lack of confidence in Diem when (in Life’s issue of May 13, 1957) it considered Diem’s refusal to hold elections as one of his greatest achievements, because the refusal would prevent his country from committing “national suicide.”11 In a rigged referendum abetted by Landsdale (October 1955), in which Diem received one-third more votes in Saigon than there were registered voters, he deposed Bao Dai and proclaimed the Republic of Vietnam, with himself as President, Prime Minister, Defense Minister, and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The new regime was immediately recognized by the US, five European and three Asian nations.12

By January 1956, Diem’s ruthlessness in purging what remained of Viet Minh cells in the south did not enhance his popularity in his own country and lost many potential allies.13 In Diem’s visit to the United States (May 5-19, 1957), Eisenhower called him the “miracle man” of Asia.14 Guerrillas immediately began a campaign of assassination of South Vietnamese officials (over 400 by the year’s end) that was meant to disrupt his government. He reacted by appointing more military men to administrative positions, which indirectly helped the guerrillas through the neglect of the population’s social and economic problems.15 With the resettlement of the northern refugees, Diem enjoyed perhaps the only popular support for his regime during the years 1955-57, but thereafter his policies only generated discontent.16 At a certain point, the US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) took up the training of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN),17 and South Vietnam became, in effect, a client state of the US. Millions of dollars in aid, most of which went to the military, poured into South Vietnam annually, and were mostly spent on maintaining Diem and his family in power.18

Popular resistance to Diem gradually began to materialize. A peasant uprising in the Mekong Delta attacked and overthrew village administrations (January 17, 1960), which was a reaction to the oppressive measures of the regime in building and maintaining the hated “agrovilles.” In August of the same year, US intelligence produced an estimate that the South Vietnamese government had to win the support of the peasants or discontent would increase.19 Diem also encountered resistance by his own troops in Saigon. In the paratroop revolt (November 11-12, 1960) led by two colonels, which initiated the cycle of plotting against his regime, Diem was declared incapable of saving the country from Communism, and American intelligence confirmed the dissatisfaction with his inability to inspire resistance to it.20 As if to confirm this perception, there was a dramatic increase in revolutionary activity on the part of Diem’s adversaries. North Vietnamese leaders, who had already authorized limited armed resistance and selected assassinations of officials in South Vietnam, hoped that an indigenous southern movement would lead the insurrection there. They were concerned with consolidating their gains in the north, but their southern strategy received unsolicited help from Diem himself as his unpopularity grew. The southern revolutionary forces united in December 1960 to form the National Liberation Front (NLF)—an organization originally intended to “rally all those disaffected with Diem,” including non-Communists, to push toward independence.21

The US government remained committed to prevent a Communist takeover by means of financial and military support of Diem’s regime. President Kennedy sent one fact-finding mission after another to Vietnam, most of which were optimistic about the possibility of victory. In one report, Defense Secretary McNamara and General Taylor, for example, thought that a military program of anti-guerrilla war might reduce insurgency to “organized banditry” by 1965.22 Diem did not make the American effort easy, although he promised Kennedy in a letter (December 14, 1961) that he would be content to “liberalize” his regime in return for a large increase in aid.23 In January 1962, the US Air Force began flying defoliating missions in Vietnam,