Diem Day

Quotes from The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam, by Geoffrey Shaw.

Two streams of propaganda, from the communists and the Times, combined to bring the Kennedy administration to breach his promise, and worse. A group of radical Buddhist monks, opposed to all modernization and guided (confirmed after the war) by North Vietnam, launched protests that included a monk immolating himself. Western reporters had been invited to photograph the event, and the photo and stories made headlines across the U.S. This was during the height of the civil rights movement, and the press portrayed this as a protest against oppression. That wasn’t the case. Pres. Diem was working diligently with Buddhist leaders to build reconciliation. The countryside and the war effort were unaffected by the protests.?

An actual journalist reporting on Vietnam, Margaret Higgins, recalled later, “And thus is history recast. All those Vietnamese-speaking Americans circling the countryside for the purpose of testing Vietnamese opinion; all those American officers gauging the morale of the troops; all those C.I.A. agents tapping their sources (hopefully) everywhere, all those dispatches from Ambassador Nolting -–an army of data-– collectors in reasonable agreement had been downgraded in favor of press dispatches stating opposite conclusions. It was the first time that I began to comprehend, in depth and in some sorrow, what was meant by the power of the press.”

Anne Blair, another American woman reporting on her research of the scene, saw, as Clare Booth Luce and Margaret Higgins had, the real meaning of what the press had done in Vietnam. “She identified the power of the Halberstam-Sheehan group of reporters? to draw attention to and amplify the Buddhist crisis at Kennedy's political expense. She highlighted the fact that Halberstam, Sheehan, and other reporters had made clear their support for a coup. in Blair’s assessment, Kennedy was so driven by domestic concerns related to bad publicity over Diem in South Vietnam that he made himself prey to a flawed and an inexpert group headed by the powerful Averrell Harriman. In turn, these domestic concerns prevented him from seeing or hearing what the most experienced Southeast Asian experts were saying: stay the course with Diem.”

The coup was launched on Nov. 1, 1963, while troops supporting Diem were dispersed in the countryside fighting the war. Diem and his brother Nhu escaped from the Presidential Palace before the coup troops arrived. They were found the next morning, after attending Mass at St. Francis Xavier church (which was Diem’s daily practice). They were outside the church in a Grotto of Our Lady. They were arrested, rushing into an armored personnel carrier, and brutally murdered.

The coup leaders could not form a stable government, and America was on the road to take over the war, where they would be widely seen as invading murderers of Vietnam’s legitimate president.

Three weeks after Diem's assassination, Kennedy himself was assassinated. It was all for nothing.

The past is not past, and Diem is not dead. He is light. His light could bring about a reconciliation that would heal America's and Vietnam's great historical trauma.

Pass along the light.