The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [175]
In the same years the North too suffered disaffection, owing partly to food scarcity as a result of being cut off from the rice bowl of the South, and partly to Communist oppression. In a public confession to Party colleagues, General Giap acknowledged in 1956 that “We executed too many honest people … resorted to terror … disciplinary punishments … torture.” Internal stresses kept Hanoi too preoccupied in its own territory to launch war against the South, but reunification remained the fixed goal. While crushing resistance and establishing control during the period 1955–60, Hanoi enlarged and trained its forces, accumulated arms from China and by degrees built up connections with the insurgents in the South.
By 1960 between 5000 and 10,000 guerrillas, called by the Saigon government Viet-Cong, meaning “Vietnamese Communist,” were estimated to be active in the South. While the Vietnamese army, under American advice, was mainly stationed along the partition line to guard against a Korea-style attack, the insurgents were spreading havoc. According to Saigon, they had in the past year assassinated 1400 officials and civilians and kidnapped 700 others. Diem’s most stringent measures, including death sentences authorized for terrorists, subversives and “rumor spreaders,” and relocation of peasant communities into fortified village clusters, proved ineffective, The population felt no active loyalty either to Diem or, on the other hand, to Communism or the cause of reunification. They wanted safety, land and the harvest of their crops. “The situation may be summed up,” reported the American Embassy in January 1960, “in the fact that the government has tended to treat the population with suspicion or to coerce it and has been rewarded with apathy and resentment.”
In that year the Manifesto of the Eighteen, issued by a Committee for Progress and Liberty that included ten former Cabinet members, called for Diem’s resignation and sweeping reforms. He had all of them arrested. Six months later a military coup attempted his overthrow on the ground that he had “shown himself incapable of saving the country from Communism and of protecting national unity.” With the aid of troops summoned from outside the city, Diem suppressed the coup within 24 hours. He received Washington’s congratulations and expression of the hope that with strengthened power, he could now proceed to “rapid implementation of radical reforms.” This American hope was conveyed with monotonous regularity, always with the hint behind it that continuance of aid depended on “standards of performance.” Yet when reforms failed to follow, American aid did not stop, for fear that if it were withdrawn Diem would fall.
American confidence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union suffered another shock in 1957 when the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit to a height of 560 miles and a speed around the globe of 18,000 miles per hour. In the year before this dismaying feat, Soviet armed forces had taken over Hungary while the United States, for all Dulles’ boasts, remained passive. In the year after Sputnik, Communists under Fidel Castro took over Cuba, likewise watched helplessly by the United States, though only 90 miles away. Yet the Communists in faraway Vietnam were perceived as a direct threat to American security.
In consultation between Washington and Saigon, a counter-guerrilla or counter-insurgency plan was developed to coordinate the work of American agencies with the Vietnamese army. MAAG’s personnel was doubled to 685 for the program. The new Ambassador, Elbridge Durbrow, had misgivings. He did not think the additional military aid the plan called for should