Via Mike
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.
