Word: diem
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...question now is whether the Cambodian regime can survive until the shooting is somehow stopped. Washington officials frankly worry about the similarity between Cambodia today and South Viet Nam in the early 1960s. Saigon was then ruled by the aloof and autocratic Ngo Dinh Diem and his ambitious younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu; they were toppled in a 1963 coup that had active U.S. encouragement. Cambodia has the somewhat mystical Lon Nol, paralyzed on his left side as the result of a 1971 stroke, and his younger brother Lon Non, a vain and ruthless army general...
...PART OF THAT struggle, it is helpful to see Vietnam's fight in its proper perspective. In 1958, anti-Diem terrorists in the South started to avenge the man-hunts launched against Diem's opponents and the indiscriminate imprisonment of people alleged to be members of anti-government political and religious groups which Diem began in 1957. Hanoi still hoped to reunify Vietnam according to the 1954 Geneva agreements, and, with Moscow's advice, Hanoi protested with diplomatic notes while anti-Diem forces in the South were mobilizing...
...National Liberation Front was able to crystallize together with the Northern activist elements only in 1959 as U.S. aid to Diem made "peaceful coexistence" look untenable to Northern leadership. Guerilla warfare intensified until 1965, when Hanoi escalated--probably not fully appreciating U.S. willingness to pulverize North Vietnam mercilessly as in the carpet-bombing raids last December...
...streets of Saigon were filled with joy and vengeance on Nov. 1, 1963-the day that South Vietnamese generals stormed Ngo Dinh Diem's presidential palace and sent him to his grave. First came the long night of siege and the thunder of tanks in battle at the palace walls. Then came the final rush through the grounds by Diem's once faithful soldiers. As the battle subsided, I caught the first glimpse of a white flag waving tentatively from a first-floor palace window. In a minute or so the air was filled with silence-and with...
Other mobs formed and swirled through the city. One of them, about 5,000 strong, tore off the head of a huge statue they thought to be a likeness of Madame Nhu, Diem's sister-in-law. They wheeled it through the streets, then joyously rolled it up and down the steps of the National Assembly over and over again. Up the street, another group heaved rocks into the bookstore owned by one of Diem's brothers, tossed the books and religious objects into the gutter and put the torch to the pile of rubble. The people danced...