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By Root 919 0

from Vietnam with every hope of overriding a domestic uproar. But this was the time of official optimism, with no current running for withdrawal. Kennedy did, at about this time, instruct Michael Forrestal to think about preparing a plan for post-election withdrawal, saying it would take a year to prepare acceptance by Congress and by the allies in Asia and Europe. Nothing came of this, but when asked privately how he would manage withdrawal without damage to American prestige, he replied, “Easy; put a government in there that would ask us to leave.” Publicly he was saying that for the United States to withdraw “would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam but Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay.” He was thinking both ways and was never to resolve the duality.

A constant factor in the policy process was fear of what China might do. The Sino-Soviet split was by now apparent, and as the Russian threat seemed to shrink in a period of détente, the Chinese, behind the curtain of severed relations, loomed more menacing than before. The impression of Korea had not faded; the bellicose show over Quemoy-Matsu, the annexation of Tibet, the border war with India taken together made a picture of infinite mischief. When asked in a television interview if he had any reason to doubt the validity of the domino theory, Kennedy said, “No, I believe it, I believe it.… China looms so high just beyond the frontiers that if South Vietnam went, it would not only give them an improved position for guerrilla assault on Malaysia, but would also give the impression that the wave of the future in Southeast Asia was China and the Communists.”

In fact, if Americans could have seen the value of accepting a strongly nationalist North Vietnam, Communist or not, a vigorous, independent, intensely anti-Chinese nation would have been a far better barrier against the feared Chinese expansion than a divided warring country offering every opportunity for interference from across the border. This did not occur to the best and the brightest. China, in any event, was then struggling in the economic ditch into which the Great Leap Forward had landed her, and in no shape for foreign adventure. “Know your enemy” is the most important precept in any adversary relationship, but it is the peculiar habit of Americans, when dealing with the Red menace, to sever relations and deal from ignorance.

The military establishment, fulfilling McNamara’s order at Honolulu, was now busy in drawing up a comprehensive plan, absorbing miles of memoranda and months of paper work, for withdrawal of a not very imposing total of 1000 men by the end of 1963 and the build-up and financing of ARVN to the point where in training and numbers it could be expected to take over the war. While MACV and CINCPAC and Defense Department were up to their knees in figures and acronyms and exchange of documents, progress soured in South Vietnam and brought on the crisis that ended in Diem’s fall and death, dragging behind it the moral responsibility of the United States.

Diem’s mandate to govern, never thoroughly accepted by the mixture of sects, religions and classes, was finally shattered by the Buddhist revolt in the summer of 1963. Long resentment of the favored treatment of Catholics practiced by the French and continued by Diem fired the Buddhist cause and gave it a native appeal. In May, when Saigon prohibited celebrations of Buddha’s birthday, riots followed and government troops fired on the demonstrators, killing several. Renewed riots and martial law were given a terrible notoriety by the desperate act of self-immolation by a Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in a public square of Saigon. The protest spread, gathering in all opponents of the regime: anti-Catholics, anti-Westerners, dissidents of the lower and middle classes. Repression and violence rose, known to be guided by Diem’s brother Nhu and culminating in a raid on the main Buddhist pagoda and the arrest of hundreds of monks. The Foreign Minister and the Ambassador to the United States resigned in protest; Diem’s government