Word: diem
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...upped to 443,000, and to 542,000 in January 1966. According to the Pentagon analysts, Westmoreland had failed to realize that the Communists would match the U.S. buildup. Westmoreland predicted in 1965 that within two years the U.S. would win the war. USING MUSCLE ON KY. After Diem's overthrow, the U.S. was frustrated by governmental instability and continued political factionalism in Saigon. The breaking point came in May 1966 when Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, then the country's military strongman, provoked another Buddhist outburst by saying that he would remain in office another year, postponing...
NAIVETÉ ABOUT DIEM. The Pentagon papers reflect Washington's shallow perception of the complexity of South Viet Nam's problems and the U.S.'s limited ability to deal with them. Shortly before the 1963 coup that overthrew President Ngo Dinh Diem, the White House cabled to then Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge a lengthy set of instructions. Tidily organized under points A through M, the missive loftily proposed solutions for a country riven by political and religious strife and on the verge of military collapse. According to the cable's ungainly prose, Lodge was directed...
...DIEM COUP. The Pentagon papers show that the U.S. first conspired with South Vietnamese military plotters against President Diem, later backed away from an active role and, in the end, stood by and allowed the coup to take place. In the summer of 1963, officials in Saigon and Washington, D.C., debated whether or not to coax Diem into instituting reforms or to support a military coup. Kennedy and his advisers had come to view Diem and his brother, Secret Police Chief Ngo Dinh Nhu, as corrupt mandarins whose brutal oppression of Buddhists and political opponents was an embarrassment...
Characteristically both Machiavellian and idealistic, the Kennedy Administration approved efforts to encourage a coup after Diem's attack on Buddhist pagodas in August, but when reservations over the success of an overthrow deepened, the U.S. withdrew its clandestine support of the generals and the coup was delayed. Concern heightened, however, with reports that Nhu might seek rapprochement with the North, which could have resulted in a neutralist government in Saigon. The plotting continued, and two days before Diem was ousted, McGeorge Bundy cabled Lodge...
ONCE A COUP UNDER RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP HAS BEGUN, IT IS IN THE INTEREST OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT THAT IT SHOULD SUCCEED. Lodge Was ordered not to intervene directly on either side; but without American support, Diem's government was doomed. At 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 1, Diem telephoned Lodge; it was the last contact any American had with Diem before his assassination the following day. WITHDRAWAL ADVICE. In an August 1963 session of the National Security Council, State Department Expert Paul M. Kattenburg recommended that the U.S. withdraw from Viet Nam completely. The suggestion was spurned by Secretary...