American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity by Christian G. Appy Read Free Book Online Page A

evidence against Diem mounted—his dictatorial rule, his repression of dissent, his discrimination against non-Catholics, his unpopularity—most of it stayed out of the headlines. As late as 1961, Vice President Lyndon Johnson called Diem “the Winston Churchill of Asia .” When a journalist asked Johnson if he really believed in that comparison, LBJ replied, “Shit, Diem’s the only boy we got out there.”
    Those who championed Diem as pro-democracy had to twist logic and language beyond the breaking point. “Vietnam’s Democratic One-Man Rule” was the Orwellian title of a 1959
New Leader
article written by Wesley Fishel, a Michigan State political scientist who helped train Diem’s secret police. Fishel claimed that Diem had a democratic “vision,” but it would take time to implement. Diem’s dictatorial powers would provide the stability necessary for democracy to evolve. At bottom, the argument rested on the claim that the Vietnamese were not “ready” for democracy. They were too “immature.” As Fishel put it, “ The peoples of Southeast Asia are not, generally speaking, sufficiently sophisticated to understand what we mean by democracy.”
    The blanket of propaganda that hid Diem’s failure to gain popular support ripped open in June 1963 when a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, burned himself to death on a Saigon street. Journalist Malcolm Browne’s photograph of the immolation circled the globe. It showed the robed monk, with shaved head, sitting perfectly upright, legs crossed in the lotus position, engulfed in flames. “ Jesus Christ !” President Kennedy exclaimed as he viewed the photograph on the front page of the
New York Times
.
    Thich Quang Duc’s self-sacrifice was an indelible protest against Ngo Dinh Diem. It symbolized the much larger Buddhist uprising against a regime that reserved high office for Diem’s own family and other Catholics, and discriminated against the Buddhist majority. Americans may already have known that Diem’s rule was threatened in the countryside by a Communist-led insurgency. But now a mass audience was learning that Diem was also opposed by nonviolent Buddhists. Obvious questions arose. Why is the United States supporting a ruler hated by monks? What had Diem done to inspire such extreme protest? How could this happen after eight years of American aid and military support?
    Five more monks immolated themselves that summer and fall, keeping media attention on the Buddhist uprising and Diem’s effort to repress it by storming hundreds of temples, killing dozens, and imprisoning thousands.
    On November 1, 1963, Diem was overthrown by a junta of his own military officers. Diem and his brother were thrown in the back of an armored personnel carrier with their hands tied behind their backs. Then they were murdered. South Vietnam’s “miracle man” was shot in the back of the head. The Kennedy administration denied any responsibility for the coup. In fact, the president had authorized it. He directed the Central Intelligence Agency and American ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, to assure the plotting generals that the United States would approve their seizure of power and would give them the support that had once belonged to Diem. Kennedy did not order Diem’s murder, but he should not have been shocked when it happened. The history of military coups is not noted for its nonviolence.
    Kennedy soured on Diem partly because he was dictatorial and unpopular. But he was mostly concerned that Diem had failed to crush the Communist-led insurgency . In fact, the White House was worried that Diem’s brother Nhu might be negotiating some kind of accommodation with the Communists. Near the end, Washington found Diem not too tyrannical, but too weak. Perhaps a military junta would do a better job. And so the generals were given the green light to move against the man America had supported for eight years.
    The Communist-led insurgency would