Eisenhower hoped Diem would carry out land reforms to help the peasants of the South get land of their own. But Diem was not interested in land reform. The minister in charge of the land reform wasn’t interested either. He was a big landowner. Land abandoned by its owners during the war was taken from the peasants who were now farming it. Those peasants who did get land had to pay for it in instalments. However, when the Vietminh distributed land, they gave it to the peasants.
Diem was only interested in hunting down supporters of the Vietminh and ‘re-educating’ them in prison camps. Those who couldn’t be persuaded to change their views were executed. Perhaps as many as 12,000 were permanently ‘re-educated’ in this way.
The July date for the 1956 election for the whole of Vietnam came and went. There was no election. Diem refused to allow an election in the South. Eisenhower didn’t try to make him have one either. Diem knew that the United States would have to go on supporting him because he prevented communist victory in the South. As one American put it, Diem was ‘a puppet who pulled his own strings-and ours as well.’ Even though America knew that this was wrong, that they should give away the land to the peasants, they could do nothing, as they had to support the non-communists.
Diem’s government favoured the landowners at the expense of the peasants. The landowners forced their peasant tenants to pay high taxes and even made them work for nothing at certain times of the year. The communists in the south knew that the peasants wanted to fight back. Diem’s attack on the Vietminh was proving very successful. Diem’s police and army were gradually eliminating Vietminh supporters in the South. It was time to fight back.
Eventually, in 1959 the communist government in the North issued orders to the Vietminh to begin a terror campaign against officials of Diem’s government. Between 1959 and 1961 on average 4000 South Vietnamese officials a year were assassinated by the Vietcong. The term Vietcong means Vietnamese communist. The Americans decided that the government of South Vietnam should use this term rather than Vietminh. Vietminh stood for patriotism and it was bad propaganda for this idea to be linked to the communists in the North. The Americans thought that anything with ‘communist’ in it was an insult.
In December 1960 the communists in Hanoi set up the National Liberation Front in the South. The NLF, though, did not consist only of communists. It had broad appeal to middle-class professionals such as doctors and teachers, as well as peasants and workers. Its main aims were to overthrow Diem, get rid of the Americans, and reunite North and South Vietnam. A month after the NLF was created; John F. Kennedy became president of the United States.
Kennedy wanted the American people to think he was tough on communism. He was keen to increase American involvement in South Vietnam but he would not send United States combat troops there. So again the USA are keen to be involved with the affairs of Vietnam, and they are becoming increasingly involved. He agreed to increase the number of military experts training the South Vietnamese Army, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). These went up from 700 to 3000. By 1963 there were 16,000 of them. He also agreed to equip a further 20,000 troops for the ARVN. This brought up the size of the South Vietnamese Army to 170,000 men; they were all paid for by the US.
The issue of combat troops continued to come up. Kennedy’s advisers suggested that one day there would be 300,000 American combat troops in Vietnam. Kennedy laughed, ‘Well, George, you’re supposed to be one of the smartest guys in town, but you’re crazier than hell. That will never happen.’ In 1968 the number of American soldiers stood at 536,000. In 1961 the United States spent nearly $270 million in Military support for Diem. This shows that Kennedy was oblivious of what he was getting into as the number of combat troops increased. The ARVN numbered 170,000 troops but the number of Vietcong was estimated at just 10,000. The Americans should have realised at this point that there was a substantially large amount of troops not needed and that Diem just wants a bigger army. The real point was that there wasn’t a military solution to the Vietcong. The only chance that Diem and the Americans had to defeat the VC was to undermine the popularity of the communists in the South. To do this they had to show that they could help the people as much, if not more.
Diem’s solution in 1962 to NLF popularity in the South was to take the peasants away from areas where they live in the NLF was strong. Sympathetic villages were providing food and passing intelligence information about ARVN activities in the area to the VC. Diem’s ‘strategic hamlet’ programme was supposed to stop the villagers helping the communists in the South. It meant moving entire villages many kilometres away from their homes. The population was re-housed in a new location ‘protected’ from the ‘Vietcong’ by South Vietnamese troops.
The peasants were then told they had to pay the South Vietnamese government officials for the building materials to rebuild their homes. They even had to pay for the barbed wire to protect them from the VC. The US, of course, had provided these items, for free distribution to the Vietnamese families involved. Again the US was there to help providing protection but the South government official had to abuse the privilege.
By the summer of 1963 over two-thirds of the population had been moved to these strategic hamlets. The British in Malaya had used this system successfully against communist in the 1950s. The big difference was that food was hard to come by in Malaya. In Vietnam it was easy to get hold of. The NLF did not starve. Neither were they cut off from the peasants. In many cases the NLF already had supporters inside the villages. All that happened was that Diem had now moved communist supporters to a new area in which they could spread their ideas. Those villages who weren’t already in the NLF often became supporters because of the way they were treated. The strategic hamlet programme was a terrible flop.
In January 1963 a fight took place near the village of Ap Bac, about 60 kilometres from Saigon. About 350 Vietcong guerrillas were forced into a battle by over 2000 South Vietnamese troops, backed up by United States Helicopters with their American crews. The US was at hand again to provide support, as they were increasingly becoming involved with the Vietnam affairs. The prospects for a stunning victory looked good. Instead, five of the helicopters were shot down and three American crewmen killed. Sixty South Vietnamese troops also died. Just three VC bodies were found.
The American adviser to the ARVN forces in the area, Lieutenant Colonel Vann, was angered by the failure of the ARVN commanders to work together. They squabbled with each other. Vann quit his job. He argued that the South Vietnamese was fighting the war very badly. The United States government was covering up the fact so as not to spoil relations with Diem.
The press in the United States was also being kept in the dark about the war at this time. Kennedy denied that there were any American troops involved in combat in Vietnam. But American jet pilots were bombing and machine-gunning NLF areas. Helicopter pilots were also transporting ARVN forces into combat zones. After the battle at Ap Bac an American journalist asked an American military spokesman snapped back, ‘Get on team.’
American officials in the United States Information Service (USIS) were aware that they were losing propaganda war to the NLF. In 1962 USIS came up with the idea of a competition for a new name for the enemy. Vietcong wasn’t suitable any longer. ‘Viet’ was wrong because it implied that (communist) was also wrong because most peasants wouldn’t know what they meant anyway. The head of USIS wanted a term which would show the Vietcong as ‘trainers…crackpots or madmen.’ It’s not clear which entry (if there were any) won the top prize of $47. Perhaps the competition says more about the USIS than its enemy.
On 11th June 1963 a 66-year-old Buddhist monk sat down in the middle of a busy Saigon road. He crossed his legs and held his palms together in an act of prayer. Other Buddhist monks crowded round and one of them poured a can of petrol over his orange robe. The monk calmly lit a match and set himself alight. The man remained sitting for ten minutes as the flames covered his body. Eventually he toppled over. An American photographer, tipped off in advance, was there to take the photograph, which stunned the world. The reason for this monk to do such a thing was because of the way Buddhists were treated under Diem’s government and the Americans realised that he had to go. Diem was a strong Catholic, had promoted many fellow Catholics to important jobs in the government and the army. Vietnam’s Buddhists, who made up most of the population, resented this favouritism. But the real cause of their anger was Diem’s anti-Buddhist polices. Buddhists, unlike Catholics, had to have government permission to carry out their acts of worship.
Diem also had a law, which banned all flags except the flag of Vietnam. When Catholics in Hue flew the flag of the Catholic Church the police took no action. In May 1963 the Buddhists decided to test the law by flying the Buddhist flag during celebrations of the Buddhist’s birthday. Troops opened fire on the celebrating crowd. Nine people were killed, eight of them children. Two days later, on May 10th, 10,000 Buddhists marched in protest. Diem ordered the arrest of leading Buddhists and their supporters. These actions led to the suicide by burning of the Buddhist monk. The protests and the suicide got a great deal of publicity in the United States. For the first time the American media were covering stories about Diem’s government and its unpopularity rather than about the war. The South Vietnamese government claimed the monks were working for the communists and disregarded official American protests. Diem’s sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, did not help matters when she told American officials, ‘if the Buddhists wish to have another barbecue, I will be glad to supply the petrol and a match.’
President Kennedy realised that Diem was too unpopular to defeat Vietcong. The government in Washington gave its approval to plot to overthrow Diem and his brother, Nhu, who was Diem’s chief adviser. The US are again much involved in the plot against Diem and so again it shows that USA are becoming more involved. There were government advisers in Washington who was worried about the plot. There could have been a civil war if the anti-Diem plotters weren’t strong enough. Or even if the generals who replaced Diem were no different. Nhu wasn’t stupid. He realised that some generals were planning a plot against him and he had plan of his own to deal with them. Unfortunately for Nhu, the general he revealed this plan to was also one of the plotters. They decided, therefore, to attack before Nhu and Diem could put their plan into operation.
The troops supporting the plot surrounded Diem’s palace in Saigon on 1st November 1963. They didn’t attack it. At this stage the plan was simply to force Diem and his brother to leave the country and not to kill them. The brothers managed to escape from the palace. Diem appealed to the American ambassador. Cabot Lodge, for help but none was offered. The next day they agreed to surrender on the condition that they would be allowed to leave the country. They gave themselves up.
They agreed to be taken in an armoured car for their ‘protection’. A few moments later they were both shot dead. The people of Saigon cheered when they heard the news but Kennedy was stunned. The killing of Diem and his brother was not part of the plan. Three weeks later, Kennedy would also be dead. The general who took Diem’s place lasted three months.
The new military rules of South Vietnam try to improve relations with all the groups Diem had treated badly or ignored, such as Buddhists students and professional people. Buddhists were freed from prison. The government stated that its aim was a neutral South Vietnam in which the NLF would be allowed to exist. Foreign troops eventually, would leave. This was no what the Americans wanted to hear. The new President Lyndon Johnson wanted to show that he was tough on communism as well. He was forced to take the plunge into presidency at a crucial time. The Vietnam War had already been started and US involvement was apparent. Because Johnson was an insecure man, and with that insecurity came a fear of being ridiculed, he wanted to show the American people that he could be president in US history.
The United States wanted a more aggressive war against the communist in Honoi, not a ‘softly softly’ approach. Johnson’s version of the domino theory was typically direct. ‘If you let a bully come in to your front garden one day, the next day he will be up on your porch, and the next day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.’
The United States didn’t think the new government was capable of keeping the North Vietnamese ‘Bully’ out of the neighbour hood, let alone the porch. This sentence shows that it is the United States who is trying to get rid of the bully, no one else. The Americans therefore supported yet another plot in January 1964. The new military ruler, general Khanh, promised a more effective war against the communist. Khanh lasted a year. Again there is support from the US as they are now involved in most plots etc.
A more effective war was certainly needed and urgently. In 1957 the Vietminh had numbered just 2000. By the beginning of 1963 the number of Vietminh (or Vietcong) fighters had increased to only 23,000. But Diem’s unpopular and corrupt government had encouraged a rapid growth in Vietcong support. By January 1965 there was 170,000 VC fighters operating in the South. Most of these new recruits came from the South but some were North Vietnamese Army trained soldiers from the North.
The Americans had hoped that they might be able to pay for the train an effective South Vietnamese Army to fight the Vietcong. In this way the United States could avoid using their own troops. Paying for the army wasn’t a problem. The American advisers did their best to train it. But they couldn’t give it the will to fight.
The Vietcong, on the other hand, had tremendous moral. In fact, the Vietcong no longer depended on weapons from the north because they had captured as many as 200,000 American guns from the Vietnamese by the middle of 1964. The North didn’t need to send them. In early 1964 the United States military prepared plans for the bombing of North Vietnam. The Air force commander recommended bombing North Vietnam because ‘We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile.’ But they needed information on the anti-aircraft systems the communist government in the North had set up around their main cities and along the coast. Secret South Vietnamese commando raids were planned to find this out.
South Vietnamese commandos attacked. North Vietnamese set up a series of radar stations along the Gulf of Tonkin, during the night of 31st July 1964. The American destroyer, USS Maddox, assisted in the attack by monitoring the signals sent out by the radar stations. This would help to locate their positions. On August 1st, 1964 the U.S.S. Maddox was posted on a surveillance mission to study the North Vietnamese defences in the Gulf area. On the morning of 2nd August the U.S.S. Maddox spotted three North Vietnamese patrol boats, located twenty-eight miles from the coast. The patrol boats were still in international waters, which meant that they had no right to patrol South Vietnam. Captain John Herrich of the Maddox ordered fire upon the three North Vietnamese patrol boats. The Maddox had assistance from the U.S.S. Ticonderoga. The Maddox opened fire and the torpedo boats each fired a torpedo at the American ship. Two of the torpedo’s missed, and the third hit the ship but didn’t explode. US jets sank one of the boats and damaged the other two. Johnson decided to play down the incident as there were no American casualties, but he ordered the Maddox to stay in the area.
During the night of the 3rd August, the captain of the Maddox reported that his ship and the US Joy were being attacked by torpedoes. For four hours the two ships blasted away at an enemy they never saw. Not one sailor actually saw or heard communist gunfire. United States jet pilots over the ‘battle’ zone reported that they saw no evidence of the enemy. Johnson, this time, decided that the US would strike back. The jet pilots changed their first reports to support the ‘evidence’ that there had been an attack.
There was a presidential election due in November and Johnson’s Republican opponent had claimed that Johnson was soft on communism. This incident gave the president the chance to prove the opposite. The US jets were ordered to attack North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases and about 25 of these were destroyed. Johnson knew that there had been no second attack. Two or three days later he told an official. ‘Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.’ Around midnight on the 4th August, American aircrafts began sixty-four sorties (one plane attacks) over North Vietnamese patrol boat bases and major oil storage depot. During the sorties more than twenty Vietnamese vessels were destroyed, while the oil depot became an inferno of flame and smoke. The events that took place in the Gulf of Tonkin added years of tension between the United States and North Vietnam. United States Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had spent millions of dollars to aid the non-communist South Vietnamese. Before 1964 thousands of American military advisers were training and assisting the South Vietnamese army. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to bomb North Vietnam put the United States in the centre of the longest war in the nations history.
Congress believed that a second attack had taken place and that the North needed to be taught a lesson. Johnson proposed ‘the Gulf of Tonkin’ resolution congress on 7th August. The resolution or law gave the President the power to take any military measures he thought necessary to defend ‘freedom’ in South East Asia, including South Vietnam. Johnson now had the power to escalate or step up the level of American military involvement. But he wasn’t yet willing to do this. Johnson and his advisers believed that further air attacks, if needed, would be enough to bring victory. On November 1964, they attacked the American base at Bien Hoa and destroyed five B-57 jets while damaging twenty more. Since the increase of tension with the Vietcong continued, draft calls had increased substantially in the United States and American casualties were being felt across the country.
But it soon came clear that the Vietcong would prove impossible to beat by using only the South Vietnamese Army. In just two battles in December 1964 two battalions of elite, specially trained South Vietnamese troops were effectively destroyed in Vietcong ambushes. Over 700 were killed, wounded or captured - and these were the best ARVN had to offer. The NLF also attacked the US air bases. In February 1965 the NLF guerrillas destroyed ten American helicopters, killed eight servicemen, and wounded over 100. A week later, on February, the President gave his approval to ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’. This meant the bombing of North Vietnam on a regular basis. It was a major escalation of the US role in the war and another quickly followed it. In March 3500 US combat troops arrived in Vietnam to protect the air bases being used to bomb North Vietnam. By the end of the year there would be 200,000 of them. American’s war had begun. So the increasing involvement with Vietnam has escalated into war, which started from preventing the spread of communism.
The American’s now are heavily involved in Vietnam and they have subsequently created a war between themselves and the Vietcong.