Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [344]
History |
America enters the fray
American dollars had been supporting the French war effort in Indochina since 1950. In early 1955 the White House began to bankroll Diem’s government and the training of his army, the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam). Behind these policies lay the fear of the chain reaction that could follow in Southeast Asia, were South Vietnam to be overrun by Communism – the so-called Domino Effect – and, more cynically, what this would mean for US access to raw materials, trade routes and markets. Though President John F. Kennedy baulked at the prospect of large-scale American intervention, by the summer of 1962 there were twelve thousand American advisers in South Vietnam.
Despite all these injections of money, Diem’s incompetent and unpopular government was losing ground to the Viet Cong in the battle for the hearts and minds of the population. Particularly damaging to the government was its Strategic Hamlets Programme. Formulated in 1962 and based on British methods used during the Malayan Emergency, the programme forcibly relocated entire villages into fortified stockades, with the aim of keeping the Viet Cong at bay. Ill-conceived, insensitive and open to exploitation by corrupt officials, the programme had the opposite effect, driving many disgruntled villagers into the arms of the resistance. In fact, the majority of strategic hamlets were empty within two years, as villagers drifted back to their ancestral lands.
Militarily, things were little better. If America needed proof that Diem’s government was struggling to subdue the guerrillas, it came in January 1963, at the Battle of Ap Bac, where incompetent ARVN troops suffered heavy losses against a greatly outnumbered Viet Cong force. Four months later, Buddhists celebrating Buddha’s birthday were fired upon by ARVN soldiers in Hué, sparking off riots and demonstrations against religious repression, and provoking Thich Quang Duc’s infamous self-immolation in Saigon (See "The self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc"). Fearing that the Communists would gain further by Diem’s unpopularity, America tacitly sanctioned the November 1 coup that ousted Diem, who escaped with his brother to Cho Lon, only to be shot the following day.
The capital staggered from coup to coup, but corruption, nepotism and dependence upon American support remained constant. In the countryside, meanwhile, the Viet Cong were forging a solid base of popular support. Observing Southern instability, Hanoi in early 1964 proceeded to send battalions of NVA (North Vietnamese Army) infantrymen down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, with ten thousand Northern troops hitting the trail in the first year. For America, unwilling to see the Communists granted a say in the running of the South, yet unable to envisage Saigon’s generals fending them off, the only option seemed to be to “Americanize” the conflict.
In August 1964, a chance came to do just that, when the American destroyer the USS Maddox allegedly suffered an unprovoked attack from North Vietnamese craft; two days afterwards, the Maddox and another ship, the C Turner Joy, reported a second attack. Years later it emerged that the Maddox had been taking part in a covert mission to monitor coastal installations, and that the second incident almost certainly never happened. Nevertheless,