Word: diem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Each time an incident has highlighted the unpopularity of the Diem regime, the United States has publicly called for reform in South Vietnam. Yet this occasional open U.S. pressure has produced no substantial reforms, as recent events have so clearly illustrated. Still American money--now at the rate of a million a day--has poured in to sustain the Diem regime. And Diem, knowing that the U.S. thinks it needs him as much as he needs the U.S., has managed to maintain himself in the style he wishes...
...troops and their 18,000 American advisers. In spite of over $2.5 billion and some 100 American lives invested in this jungle land, the guerrillas continue to control two-thirds of the countryside. Peasants in these areas pay taxes to the Vietcong and use Vietcong currency. And now the Diem government seems to be on the verge of losing the cities as well...
...long as Diem remains in power, winning the war in the countryside, if indeed it is possible, would require killing so many Vietnamese people the (Communists and their supporters) that those who remain would lack the strength or will to carry on the fight against what they at least, think is Diem tyranny. Several hundred thousand South Vietnamese troops, now the most modern and well-equipped in South East Asia, have so far failed...
...winning the war with Diem in power seems both unlikely and undesirable, winning the war without him would appear equally impossible. As long as America supplies Diem with the military equipment to fight the war, he will be able to suppress any opposition that the U.S. might like to see replace him. Cutting off commercial aid will only make him more unpopular, without destroying the real source of his power...
...Diem's opposition calls for elections with international supervision. But the United States seems to have ignored the issue of free elections, apparently from fear of a Communist victory at the polls. Yet such elections offer America its only graceful way out of a terribly embarrassing position. National self-determination, after all, is supposed to be an American tenet. The rest of the world could only accuse us of upholding one of our best principles...