Word: mecklin
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...know how much you miss the papers," says St. Louis Cab Driver Mecklin Wilson, "until they're gone...
Died. John Mecklin, 53, journalist; of cancer; in Fairfield, Conn. A cum laude graduate of the Ernie Pyle school, Mecklin began covering the world's wars in 1942 as a correspondent for the United Press in the Mediterranean theater. Then, broadening his scope, he cabled his battlefield and political reports to TIME from Indochina and the Middle East. Mecklin's service as U.S. Public Affairs Officer chief in Saigon from 1962 to 1964 provided the background for his book, Mission in Torment, a widely praised account of the Viet Nam conflict's early years. Later, he became...
MISSION IN TORMENT, by John Mecklin. The author, who was USIS chief in Saigon from 1962 to 1964, takes a balanced second look at U.S. policy toward Viet Nam and especially toward the late Ngo Dinh Diem. Mecklin feels that the U.S. measured Diem only by his intransigence and overlooked his legitimate sovereignty, thereupon condoning the coup that unleashed warring factions and led to six more coups...
Still, the deed was done. Was it justified? Mecklin thinks not. "A coup d'etat in such circumstances," he writes, "was desperate surgery. The odds against success were comparable with, say, a kidney transplant." And indeed the graft didn't take. Diem's successors proved unable to halt the "relentless deterioration, confirming in dreary succession all the black predictions of those who had opposed the coup...
...Unalterable Obligation." The lessons that emerge from Mecklin's account are sad but simple. Highhanded as he was, Diem deserved greater understanding from the U.S. Writes Mecklin: "Just as the U.S. should insist on effective action against a guerrilla enemy, we should rigidly limit our interference to this objective. We should accept almost any extreme of public embarrassment, even at the expense of our 'dignity,' to permit the host government to enjoy the trappings of independence...