The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [180]
Papers on doctrine and methods poured from Walt Rostow, the voluble professor from MIT who held the number-two post at NSC. Speaking on guerrilla warfare at the graduation exercises at Fort Bragg in June 1961, he brought the “revolutionary process” in the Third World under the American wing by calling it “modernization.” America, he said, was dedicated to the proposition that “Each nation will be permitted to fashion out of its own culture and ambitions the kind of modern society it wants.” America respects “the uniqueness of each society,” seeks nations which shall “stand up straight … to protect their own independence,” undertake to “protect the independence of she revolutionary process now going forward.” Thomas Jefferson himself could not have better expressed America’s true principles—spoken here by one who consistently advocated their contradiction in practice.
Although the doctrine emphasized political measures, counter-insurgency in practice was military. Since it was not held in great favor by the military establishment, which did not welcome elite commands or intrusions into regular routines and regarded all this emphasis on reforms as getting in the way of its proper task of training men to drill and shoot, counter-insurgency in operation did not live up to the high-minded zeal of the theory. All the talk was of “winning the allegiance” of the people to their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be won by outsiders was not a good gamble.
What, in fact, did the United States and Diem have to offer an apathetic or alienated population? Flood control, rural development, youth groups, slum clearance, improved coastal transport, educational assistance were among the American-sponsored programs, all worthy but not of the essence. To successfully counteract the insurgents, counter-insurgency would have had to redistribute land and property to the peasants, redistribute power from the mandarins and mafias, disband the security forces that were filling Saigon’s prisons—in short, remake the old regime and pledge it to a cause, as Lansdale was to say, “which makes a stronger appeal to the people than the Communist cause.” Diem and his family, especially his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and Mme. Nhu, and their fellows of the governing class had no such intentions, nor indeed did their American sponsors.
The United States was still demanding reform as a quid pro quo of American aid, as if meaningful reform that could “win the allegiance” of the population were something that could be accomplished in a few months. It took some 25 centuries in the West, with a much faster rate of change than in the East, before government began to act in the interest of the needy. The reason why Diem never responded to the American call for reform was because his interest was opposed. He resisted reform for the same reason as the Renaissance popes, because it would diminish his absolute power. American insistence on his need of popular support was mere din in his ears, irrelevant to Asian circumstances. Asia presumes an obligation of citizens to obey their government; Western democracy regards government as representing the citizens. There was no meeting ground nor likely to be one. But because South Vietnam was a barrier to Communism, the United States, impervious to the obvious, persisted in trying to make Diem’s government live up to American expectations. The utility of “perseverance in absurdity,” Edmund Burke once said, “is more than I could ever discern,”
With a crisis erupting over the threatened “loss” of Laos, the Joint Chiefs in May 1961 recommended that if Southeast Asia were to be held from the Communists, sufficient United States forces should be