Countdown to Diem Day 11/2 – Diem was winning the war

Quotes are from The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Veitnam, by Geofrey Shaw.

The War was being Won

The proof of the substantial gains of the GVN was clear to the experts in the spring of 1963. As Robert Thompson [British counter-insurgency expert] reported, “Now in March 1963, I can say, and in this I am supported by all members of the mission, that the government is beginning to win the shooting war against the viet cong.”? Two months later, Secretary McNamara reported that the overall situation in Vietnam was improving: ”In the military sector of the counter insurgency, we are winning.”

Diem’s metric for success was not the number of viet cong who were killed, but the number who returned to their villages voluntarily to participate again in its productive life. He didn’t want to kill them; they were his countrymen.?

Diem was following the counter-insurgency strategy the British had used successfully in Malaya. The American military wanted to replicate the strategy they had used in Korea. (Generals fighting the last war,) “This approach translated in the field into a single command: Kill more Viet cong, more efficiently. The protection of civilians within strategic hamlets, or defended Villages was all well and good… but it was second at best in the necessity of utilizing military means to destroy these insurgents.”?

This attitude contradicted the British experience in Malaya, in which they saw that “the more insurgents one indiscriminately kills, with all the horrible attendant collateral damage, the more gorillas are created from the friends and relatives of the fallen. In other words, simply killing insurgents would reach, quite rapidly, the point of diminishing returns for the government.”

As Thompson noted,” the Viet Cong cannot exist unless they can intimidate and gain the support of elements in the population. They depend on these elements for supplies, food, intelligence and recruits. This is a continual traffic and represents the weakest link in the Vietcong organization.“

“It was Central to the British counterinsurgency concept that the public saw policemen doing their justifiable duty conferred upon them by the lawful authority of the state; Justice not only had to be done but to be seen by the people is being done. This foundation of civil legal authority superseding armed might was never entirely accepted in American Military thinking on the subject.”

The Harriman group was not content with these military successes either because the Diem government was still far from the western style democracy they demanded. Nolting later said that the group's insistence on government reform was the greatest blunder of the Kennedy administration. ”The error was its refusal to understand that the elected constitutional government of Vietnam was the best available. If we were to help South Vietnam survive at all, the only available vehicle that could sustain the country was the government that had been in power for 8 years (after two elections).”

How the Press Lost the War?

“The role of the American Press in focusing the Kennedy administration on Diem's government cannot be overstated. Historian George Herring recorded the successes of the CIP [Counter Insurgency Program] in South Vietnam between 1961 and 1962. He also noted, however, that the young news reporters of the American Press Corps in Saigon placed an entirely different story before the American public… During this period, [Ambassador] Nolting stumbled upon a little known fact: at least one American reporter in South Vietnam regarded the country as a career backwater and was looking for a sensational story to provide him with a star exit.”

“On one occasion, when President Diem was dragging his whole entourage around on one of his quick-paced long-distance marches to inspect all manner of crops and fish ponds while talking with the local farmers, New York Times Reporter Homer Bigart made his discomfort more than clear to Nolting.? As Nolting recalled, the day was hot and humid and everyone had trouble keeping up with Diem, who seemed to come alive on these occasions when he could, as in his happier times as a village and then a provincial chief, be directly involved in the projects improving the lives of his people. Bigart however ”was furious with the whole setup.”? He seemed not to realize that Diem’s passion for solving the practical problems confronting the farmers was not feigned for the benefit of reporters or other onlookers.”

Diem wanted to expel Bigart, but Nolting persuaded him not to. “The very next day Bigart called Nolting and accused him of ruining his newsworthy expulsion from Vietnam.”

“David Halberstam soon replaced Bigart. Within a few weeks Halberstam became the leader of the ‘get Diem’ press group in Saigon… Halberstam’s considerable writing talent enhanced his influence. Nolting reported, “Beginning like drops of acid, his reports steadily condition the climate of American opinion. I suspect that Halberstam may have been catering to the Times editorial line. He was, I think, influenced by his bosses and they by his reports, creating a crescendo of anti-Diem propaganda.”?

?Later in August 1963, Nolting’s suspicions that Halberstam was catering to New York Times editorial bias were reinforced. He received reports from a trusted colleague that Halberstam had been seen at The Caravelle bar (a popular place for American reporters to congregate) proudly displaying a telegram from his newspaper in New York, and the substance was “Good going. Keep it up. State Department is beginning to see it our way.”

The reporter took the moral high ground for himself in his colleagues, “We are representatives of free society and we weren't going to surrender our principles to the narrow notions of a closed society.”

What principles? How many 10s of thousands of people died so Halberstam could get himself a Pulitzer Prize? This was the free press’ counterpart of the military's body counts. Damn the peasants, full speed ahead.?

Diem had a vision that the war between North and South could be ended and the country reunited, becoming free and sovereign, self-determining and independent of foreign powers. He was making overtures to the North, which prompted the American's toward his removal. It was not their vision for Vietnam.

“It cannot be denied… that the ascendency of conventional warfare controlled by a foreign power undermined the Vietnamese president's legitimacy in the eyes of his people, and this was no small matter unfortunately for both Americans and the Vietnamese. This was to prove very costly…” to put it mildly.