The overarching thesis of this book is that the first president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, possessed the Confucian Mandate of Heaven, a moral and political authority that was widely recognised by the South Vietnamese, Buddhist and Catholic alike. This devout Roman Catholic leader never lost his mandate to rule in the eyes of his people; rather, it was removed by his erstwhile allies in the U.S. government. U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Frederick “Fritz” Nolting also shares some prominent space in this book, because he was the best and highest-placed U.S. witness to the decency of Ngo Dinh Diem and the injustice of his assassination, which some Vietnamese consider a martyrdom.
The foundations of this work began some twenty-tour years ago, when I came across the popularly held negative portrayal of Diem, which abounds in books about the Vietnam War. A military historian, I was looking for standard sets of military clues that would indicate why the Vietnam War was lost. But these clues seemed to be almost completely absent in the foundational years of American entanglement with Vietnam. Indeed, all the standard markers seemed to be pointing toward a counterinsurgency campaign that was gaining substantial ground by 1963. Even the Communists acknowledged that they were having a very hard go of it then. Consequently, I shifted my focus off the military aspects and toward the political ones.
As I did so, I found that the standard claims made about Diem in popular American histories were at odds with his political, economic, cultural, and military accomplishments. The histories referring to Diem’s “corrupt government” simply did not add up with the reality of the man I found recorded elsewhere—the Diem who was up for Mass at 6:30 every morning and who was venerated by the Vietnamese as a great leader at all levels of government and as a kind man who did not like even the thought of Viet Cong guerrillas being killed. This discrepancy drew me further and further into the study of Diem’s presidency, the Americans who had supported him, and those who later decided to destroy him. Did I find a veritable Conradian “heart of darkness”? Yes, I did, but not in the quarter to which all popular American sources were pointing their accusatory fingers—in other words, not in Saigon but in Washington, D.C., within the circle of President John F. Kennedy’s closest advisors.
The actions of these men led to Diem’s murder. And with his death, nine and a half years of careful work and partnership between the United States and South Vietnam was undone. Within a few weeks, any hope of a successful outcome in Vietnam—that is, of a free and democratic country friendly toward the United States—was extinguished. Truly, in order to solve a problem that did not exist, the Kennedy administration created a problem that could not be solved. And that remains the essence of the mystery of this particular iniquity.
Geoffrey D. T. Shaw, Ph.D.
November 7, 2013
ABBREVIATIONS
ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CINCPAC commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Command
CIP Counterinsurgency Plan
Deptel Department of State telegram
DOD U.S. Department of Defense
DOS U.S. Department of State
DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
GVN government of South Vietnam
ICC International Control Commission
MAAG Military Assistance Advisory Group
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NLF National Liberation Front
NVA North Vietnamese Army
PAVN People’s Army of Vietnam (another name for NVA)
SHP Strategic Hamlet Program
SVN South Vietnam
VC Viet Cong