No More Vietnams (10 page)

Tri Quang made no secret of his real goals. He had been arrested twice by the French for working with the Viet Minh. He admitted that after 1945 he had served with Buddhist
groups that were nothing more than Communist front organizations to help Ho's army. He was a disciple of Thich Tri Do, the leader of the Communist-dominated Buddhist church in North Vietnam, and had once said that Buddhism was entirely compatible with communism. On one occasion, a reporter asked Tri Quang whether it was ethical to induce young monks to commit suicide in so painful a manner just to be able to fly the Buddhist flag a notch or two higher. Tri Quang shrugged his shoulders and said with perfect candor that “in a revolution many things must be done.”

Storms of outrage broke out in the United States and Europe when the Buddhist suicides began. Sensationalized news media reports made matters even worse. The suicides were political ploys by a few fanatic extremists, but the media said they represented the mainstream opinion of South Vietnamese Buddhists. The press played up the Buddhists as oppressed holy people, and the world blamed their political target, Diem.

Most critics attributed the suicides to Diem's repression. Nobody seemed to notice when the number of suicides increased after he was overthrown. The radical Buddhists had sought to get rid of Diem not because of religious repression but because he blocked the road to a revolutionary overthrow of South Vietnam's non-Communist government.

News-media reports of Buddhist repression had the desired effect: They turned American public opinion against Diem. One of the three reasons Secretary of State Dean Rusk listened when the Kennedy administration first considered abandoning Diem in August 1963 was the pressure of American public opinion.

The Buddhist crisis escalated dramatically on August 21 when Diem sent units of his special forces to raid the pagodas at the center of the Buddhist rebellion. Diem had not singled out the Buddhists; he would have cracked down on any group that openly sought to overturn the government. His forces did not rampage through holy places. No one was killed. They seized only pagodas, like Xa Loi, that were political command posts. Diem's raids affected just twelve of South Vietnam's
4,776 pagodas. His troops seized spears, daggers, guns, and plastic molds for making bombs, together with documents linking the radical Buddhists to the National Liberation Front.

Kennedy's advisers now lost all perspective. They accused Diem of outright repression. Even recently, a top official from that era displayed his lack of understanding by characterizing the crisis as one in which “a Frenchified Catholic Vietnamese President began to beat up the pagodas and kill Buddhist priests and Buddhist nuns.” This view was typical and totally at odds with the facts. Kennedy's anti-Diem advisers had refused to believe the balanced reports on the crisis sent previously by Ambassador Frederick Nolting and instead came to rely on the news accounts of stridently anti-Diem reporters. Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, summed up the Kennedy administration's attitude when he commented, “After the closing of the pagodas on August 21, the facts became irrelevant.”

With the facts deemed irrelevant to policymaking, the Kennedy administration proceeded to make disastrous policy. Support for the anti-Diem policy was not unanimous. Vice President Johnson, CIA Director John McCone, and General Maxwell Taylor were opposed to abandoning Diem. But three days after the pagoda raids, a powerful coalition of top officials set in motion events that resulted in a military coup against Diem's government, acting with at best cursory consideration of the consequences. A sober examination of Diem's likely successors was never undertaken. No attention was paid to the abysmally low caliber of the men with whom they were plotting. None of the generals even approached Diem in leadership qualities.

On August 24, Harriman, Hilsman, Rusk, and Undersecretary of State George Ball collaborated on a telegram to Henry Cabot Lodge, the new American ambassador in Saigon. Kennedy approved it over the phone from his vacation home in Hyannisport. It stated that the current situation was intolerable and that Diem's brother and closest adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, whom Kennedy's men held responsible for the raids, had to
be replaced. “We wish [to] give Diem reasonable opportunity to remove Nhu,” the cable read, “but if he remains obdurate, then we are prepared to accept the obvious implication that we can no longer support Diem. You may tell appropriate military commanders we will give them direct support in any interim period of breakdown [of the] central government mechanism.” It added that Lodge should “urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary.”

The cable's message was unequivocal. Since everyone knew Diem would never dismiss his brother Nhu, Lodge interpreted it as a direct order from the highest authority to prepare a coup against Diem. Another cable somewhat qualifying the first was sent to Lodge a few days later, but it was too late to slow the momentum of events in Saigon. The gun aimed at Diem's head had already been fired; the bullet could not be recalled. Lodge was an efficient ambassador, and he carried out his orders. He instructed the CIA in Saigon to make the rounds of their contacts in the military. Several South Vietnamese generals later testified that they had been sounded out by United States officials that summer on the possibility of leading a coup.

On August 29, Kennedy told his National Security Council staff that he supported the idea of a coup if its success was guaranteed. Lodge was already reporting progress. In a cable to Rusk, Lodge said, “We are launched on a course from which there is no respectable turning back: the overthrow of the Diem government.” He added, “The chance of bringing off a Generals' coup depends on them to some extent; but it depends at least as much on us.” Rusk authorized Lodge to suspend aid to Diem at a time of his choosing and instructed him to do whatever was necessary to “enhance the chances of a successful coup.” Rusk also ordered the head of the American military mission in Saigon to establish a liaison with the coup leaders and to review their plans. One plot misfired in late August, but the generals soon regrouped.

Meanwhile, direct, relentless pressure was leveled on Diem.
United States delegations toured South Vietnam without calling on him. Lodge granted Tri Quang political asylum in the American embassy. The CIA cut off support for South Vietnam's special forces. The White House publicly suspended United States aid for financing commercial imports. Kennedy stated in a televised interview that South Vietnam's government needed changes in policy and “perhaps” in personnel. The administration sought to do everything possible to show its disapproval of Diem and to do nothing to undermine the impression that it would welcome a change in government.

On November 1, 1963, the troops of General Tran Van Don and General Duong Van Minh besieged the Presidential Palace. Four days earlier, Lodge had asked those plotting the coup if they needed any help and assured them of American support afterward. Throughout the fighting, a CIA agent in constant contact with the United States Embassy was present at the military's headquarters. Diem and Nhu temporarily eluded the generals and surrendered only when Lodge and the generals gave them guaranties of safe conduct. But after they turned themselves in, the generals murdered them in cold blood with American weapons in the back of an American-made armored personnel carrier.

The Kennedy administration had concluded that Diem should be overthrown because he had completely lost touch with his people. But in fact Kennedy and his advisers were the ones who were out of touch. Kennedy was shocked when he heard that Diem had been murdered by the generals, but he should not have been surprised. Diem's assassination was no accident. Those who overthrow popular leaders frequently
must
kill them in order to remove the possibility of their return to power. General Minh later explained, “Diem could not be allowed to live, because he was too much respected among simple, gullible people in the countryside, especially the Catholics and the refugees.”

Prime Minister Tran Van Huong, whose government lasted only three months amid the political chaos in late 1964, concurred with Minh, saying, “The generals knew very well that
having no talent, nor moral virtues, and no popular support whatsoever, they could not prevent a spectacular comeback of the President and Mr. Nhu if they were alive.”

• • •

President Diem stabilized South Vietnam as a keystone holds up a dome. Political forces converged on him from all directions, but by balancing one against another, he locked all of them into place. And just as a keystone's importance is not apparent unless it is removed, Diem's vital role became clear only after his demise, when the entire South Vietnamese political system came crashing down.

What the coup supporters in the Kennedy administration should have known all along now became painfully clear: The choice in South Vietnam had been not between Diem and somebody better but between Diem and somebody worse.

Whatever his faults, Diem possessed a significant measure of legitimacy. He was a strong leader of a nation that desperately needed strong leadership. With him gone, power in South Vietnam was up for grabs. The administration officials who had so eagerly hatched the plots against Diem soon discovered that their South Vietnamese collaborators were hopelessly bad leaders. Skills needed to overthrow a government are not useful for running one. Leading a coup and leading a country are two entirely different jobs. The chaotic leadership crisis that followed in South Vietnam was a direct consequence of the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem.

For two years, the gates of the Presidential Palace were a revolving door. South Vietnam endured ten changes of government, and even more in the military high command. Intrigue became Saigon's form of government. During one chaotic week, a new government took power, one faction attempted a coup against the commander in chief, another faction suppressed the attempt, and then the suppressors of the coup ousted the commander in chief. Every time I visited South Vietnam in that period, I found a new President or Prime Minister in power. I have never met more pitiful incompetents.

South Vietnam's military had thrown out not only Diem but
also the country's constitution. The Military Revolutionary Council was now responsible for appointing the government. Politics among its members were a free-for-all. Loyalties ran not to the country but to personal careers. Unity of purpose or policy did not exist. Opportunism was the only common ideal. Never were the generals sufficiently united to appoint effective government leaders and back them up with complete support.

Journalists, who thought only they knew what was best, had always characterized American policy with the ditty “Sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem.” South Vietnam foundered at times under Diem. Now it was going down for the third time, sinking toward political collapse. It would take two years for power to come into the hands of another strong leader, General Nguyen Van Thieu.

As government-by-intrigue became business as usual, the business of fighting the war ground to a halt. Hanoi was elated. Diem, who had personified stubborn resistance to communism, had been eliminated without their having to lift a finger. Nguyen Huu Tho, the head of the National Liberation Front, said, “The Americans have managed to do what we couldn't do for nine years.” He added in disbelief that the coup was “a gift from heaven.”

Ho seized the opportunity the United States and the generals had given him. Captured documents and the testimony of defectors indicated that Ho now believed North Vietnam could win quickly. Within months, he injected regular units of the North Vietnamese Army into the South. At the beginning of each year, Radio Hanoi customarily proclaimed that it would be a “year of victories.” But in 1965, after political chaos overtook South Vietnam, Hanoi declared that this would be the year of victory.

South Vietnam's survival all along had depended on whether it developed stable institutions and the ability to defend itself before North Vietnam acquired the power to deal it a death blow. Diem at least had his country moving in the right direction. Now, while Saigon's government and army
were sliding downward by every index, Communist strength on the battlefield skyrocketed. Guerrillas inundated the countryside. Communist forces began to form larger units and engage in set-piece battles. Outside Saigon, Danang, and other major cities, Communist forces crushed South Vietnam's mobile reserve battalions one by one, and soon there would be no reserves at all left.

Time was running short. The United States would have to act soon. President Kennedy's assassination had followed Diem's by three weeks. As Vice President, Lyndon Johnson had strongly opposed the steps we took against Diem. He later told aides that our complicity in the coup was the greatest mistake we made in Vietnam. Now, as President, he had to try to pick up the pieces.

When we arrogated to ourselves the right to choose South Vietnam's government, we also assumed responsibility for its fate. Johnson wanted neither an American war nor a Communist victory. With the unraveling of South Vietnam, those choices were rapidly becoming our only choices. We could let the Communists conquer South Vietnam or send in our own troops to prevent it. The Kennedy administration sowed the seeds of intrigue that led to the overthrow and murder of Diem. Now we would reap a bitter harvest.

• • •

Most Americans believe that the Tonkin Gulf incident triggered our entry into the Vietnam War. Although it was an important turning point, it was not our opening volley.

President Kennedy had increased the number of United States military advisers in Vietnam to over 16,000 in 1963. They did much more than simply give advice; Kennedy had authorized them to accompany South Vietnamese forces into battle and to return fire if fired upon. Whether we called them “training personnel” or “combat advisers” was a matter of semantics; by the end of 1963, our forces had sustained 612 casualties. President Johnson stepped up our involvement in 1964. He ordered limited air strikes against the Ho Chi Minh
Trail in Laos and increased the number of our advisers by 7,000.