Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Vietnam: Mistake #3—the Biggest Mistake of the War

Via Mike

Major U.S. Mistakes in the Vietnam War (and others)

On November 1, 1963, the Kennedy Administration encouraged and abetted a military overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. As a consequence, Diem and his brother and chief political advisor, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were killed the next day. This led to more than two years of unstable government and military leadership in South Vietnam, which was fully exploited by North Vietnam’s Communist leaders and led to more extensive commitments of American manpower to save South Vietnam. President Johnson, who succeeded to the presidency after Kennedy’s own assassination on November 22, later called the overthrow of Diem the biggest mistake of the Vietnam War. President Nixon, writing in 1985, agreed that it was one of the three greatest mistakes of the war.

In May 1963, President Diem’s Strategic Hamlet Program seemed to be working and South Vietnam’s economy and people were prospering. Communist leaders in Hanoi and South Vietnam were discouraged. But their hopes and morale would soon be revitalized.

Beginning in May of 1963, President John F. Kennedy and many of his advisors began to be uncomfortable with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s handling of Buddhist political demonstrations on the streets of Hue and Saigon. These protests alleged discrimination against Buddhists by the strongly Roman Catholic Diem Administration. They were organized by a small but highly political leftist Buddhist group led by Thich Tri Quang. Following a bomb blast killing eight protestors in Hue, the protest organizers carefully contrived a protest that would get international attention.

More @ The Tribune

10 comments:

  1. What successes have there been from US intervention? The fanatics will declare, "WWII!" But sidestepping whether it was right to ally with Communists and whether we even needed to get involved in WWII, what other intervention can be named?

    The US, whether intentionally or unintentionally, never seems to advance US interests. Trillions are spent, men die, and for what? The world always seems like it'd have been better off without us.

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    1. Trillions are spent, men die, and for what? The world always seems like it'd have been better off without us.

      Since we never live up to our word.

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  2. how many died and suffered because "WE KNOW HOW TO DO IT BETTER" botched the job totally

    and it still goes on..

    MERRY XMAS from a veteran

    Wildflower

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    1. The saddest to me are the millions who were betrayed and died. I can't believe anyone takes our word anymore.

      "A pregnant lady" – abandoned by her lover to face her fate.
      https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-pregnant-lady-abandoned-by-her-lover.html

      By noon on March 16, a mass of humanity, troops, dependents and civilians, was clogging the old road. Some 400,000 civilians, 60,000 ARVN, and 7,000 Rangers began the attempted escape to the sea.

      By the time that the last straggling men, women, and children had reached Tuy Hoa on the coast; 300,000 civilians, 40,000 ARVN, and 6,300 Rangers were missing, never to be accounted for.

      Mind boggling. The Communists machined gunned and shelled the convoy.

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    2. thank you for your reply...

      Wildflower

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    3. & thank you. When and were were you?

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  3. 70's served stateside DAV on the job.....

    friends and relatives had "visited there" some only return as 250 pounds of sand in a box....

    Wildflower

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  4. That's what we have the Marxists Stream Media for, to keep
    the ball rolling. Is there any sovereign country that hasn't
    been victim to machinations by the bad ole boys. That's why
    that battle flag hangs around all the time - perpetual
    battles and scheming:
    5. Cambodia When President Nixon ordered the secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia in 1969, American pilots were ordered to falsify their logs to conceal their crimes. They killed at least half a million Cambodians, dropping more bombs than on Germany and Japan combined in World War II. As the Khmer Rouge gained strength in 1973, the CIA reported that its “propaganda has been most effective among refugees subjected to B-52 strikes.” After the Khmer Rouge killed at least 2 million of its own people and was finally driven out by the Vietnamese army in 1979, the U.S. Kampuchea Emergency Group, based in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, set out to feed and supply them as the “resistance” to the new Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government. Under U.S. pressure, the World Food Program provided $12 million to feed 20,000 to 40,000 Khmer Rouge soldiers. For at least another decade, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency provided the Khmer Rouge with satellite intelligence, while U.S. and British special forces trained them to lay millions of land mines across Western Cambodia which still kill or maim hundreds of people every year.
    https://conspiracyanalyst.org/2016/12/24/35-countries-where-the-u-s-has-supported-fascists-drug-lords-and-terrorists/

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    1. Thanks and it still wasn't safe to drive from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville 1992-1995, so I never made it there.

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