Báo chí Hoa Kỳ viết về Kennedy và bọn rebel Plotters.
JFK and the Seeds of Disaster in Vietnam
A U.S.-backed coup marked the triumph of politics over policy.
Fifty years ago Friday was the most important day of the Vietnam War,
when South Vietnamese generals staged a coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem
at the behest of the United States. By wrecking the South Vietnamese
government, the coup—and Diem's assassination soon after—set in motion
the events that brought U.S. combat forces into Vietnam in 1965 and kept
them there for seven years. Some of the mistakes and misdeeds that led
to that day bear a disturbing similarity to current events.
On the morning of Nov. 1, rebel plotters arrested or killed the key loyalist commanders in the Saigon area. They blocked the routes by which other loyalist forces could enter the city. Diem still had armored forces that could have captured the rebel leaders after the fighting began, but he declined to authorize such a mission, hoping to minimize bloodshed. The rebels showed less restraint, bringing tanks to bear on the palace. Bullets flew outside the palace in the afternoon and into the night.
The next morning Diem and his brother Nhu accepted a rebel offer of safe passage out of the country. The generals dispatched an armored personnel carrier ostensibly to take the brothers to the airport but had them executed en route. The coup leadership announced that Diem and Nhu had committed "accidental suicide."
The U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, had pushed the generals into the coup in defiance of orders from President Kennedy, who declined to rein him in. Why did JFK demur? Because he put partisan politics ahead of the national interest. Kennedy had appointed Lodge, a Republican and likely contender for the 1964 GOP presidential nomination, to the Saigon post in the hope that he would be ensnared in a protracted conflict with no prospects of immediate victory, which could prevent him from campaigning or damage him as a candidate. When Lodge sought to foment the coup, the president shied from firing him because Lodge could then have accused Kennedy of playing politics with the ambassadorship.
Presidential subordination of U.S. foreign policy to partisan politics has occurred all too frequently in recent years. Journalists such as Bob Woodward and former Obama administration officials such as Vali Nasr have shown that partisan operatives within the current U.S. administration have dictated national security policy based on approval ratings rather than the national interest. The complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the abbreviation of the Afghan surge and the rapid downsizing of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan rank among the most baleful consequences of this politicization.
ENLARGE
Lodge and the journalists he relied on for information—particularly David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan—believed
that replacing Diem with a more liberal regime would placate critics
and bolster the war effort. Lodge dismissed the advice of knowledgeable
Americans, such as his predecessor, Frederick Nolting, who emphasized
Diem's strengths and warned that liberalization would play into the
enemy's hands.
A nationalist respected even by his communist enemies, Diem had managed to hold together a fractious nation and had turned the war around in 1962 by empowering a rising generation of dynamic leaders. In South Vietnam as in most countries with an authoritarian political culture, liberalization signaled weakness and encouraged subversion.
After Diem's death, anti-government protests intensified. Ultimately, the government used far more force to suppress these protesters than Diem ever had. The leaders of the 1963 coup proved much less competent than the man they replaced. They squabbled and purged many of the government's best leaders because of past loyalties to Diem.
Vietnamese Communist leaders hailed the coup as a "gift," telling the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett that "the Americans have done something that we haven't been able to do for nine years and that was get rid of Diem." The ineffectiveness of the government that replaced Diem led to the fall of successive South Vietnamese governments, stimulating the North Vietnamese offensive that compelled the U.S. to intervene on the ground.
During its remaining years, the Obama administration might have to decide whether to promote the removal of autocratic leaders in places like Syria, Egypt and perhaps even Afghanistan. Unfortunately, today's policy makers may be led astray by most of what they have read on Vietnam. Gordon Goldstein's book "Lessons in Disaster," the favorite Vietnam book of this White House, recycles past caricatures of Diem as a corrupt and ineffective autocrat, and it ignores the difficulties of governing an authoritarian society at war.
Such renderings of history sustain a narrative of Vietnam as inherently unwinnable. The guardians of that narrative defend it at all costs, for it undergirds the aversion to military intervention that has predominated among American liberals since Vietnam. In truth, the U.S. stood on the right side in Vietnam. But individual Americans behaved badly and led the U.S. and South Vietnam to disaster.
Mr. Moyar is the author of "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965."
On the morning of Nov. 1, rebel plotters arrested or killed the key loyalist commanders in the Saigon area. They blocked the routes by which other loyalist forces could enter the city. Diem still had armored forces that could have captured the rebel leaders after the fighting began, but he declined to authorize such a mission, hoping to minimize bloodshed. The rebels showed less restraint, bringing tanks to bear on the palace. Bullets flew outside the palace in the afternoon and into the night.
The next morning Diem and his brother Nhu accepted a rebel offer of safe passage out of the country. The generals dispatched an armored personnel carrier ostensibly to take the brothers to the airport but had them executed en route. The coup leadership announced that Diem and Nhu had committed "accidental suicide."
The U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, had pushed the generals into the coup in defiance of orders from President Kennedy, who declined to rein him in. Why did JFK demur? Because he put partisan politics ahead of the national interest. Kennedy had appointed Lodge, a Republican and likely contender for the 1964 GOP presidential nomination, to the Saigon post in the hope that he would be ensnared in a protracted conflict with no prospects of immediate victory, which could prevent him from campaigning or damage him as a candidate. When Lodge sought to foment the coup, the president shied from firing him because Lodge could then have accused Kennedy of playing politics with the ambassadorship.
Presidential subordination of U.S. foreign policy to partisan politics has occurred all too frequently in recent years. Journalists such as Bob Woodward and former Obama administration officials such as Vali Nasr have shown that partisan operatives within the current U.S. administration have dictated national security policy based on approval ratings rather than the national interest. The complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the abbreviation of the Afghan surge and the rapid downsizing of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan rank among the most baleful consequences of this politicization.
ENLARGE
South Vietnamese President Diem, who was assassinated in 1963.
Associated Press
A nationalist respected even by his communist enemies, Diem had managed to hold together a fractious nation and had turned the war around in 1962 by empowering a rising generation of dynamic leaders. In South Vietnam as in most countries with an authoritarian political culture, liberalization signaled weakness and encouraged subversion.
After Diem's death, anti-government protests intensified. Ultimately, the government used far more force to suppress these protesters than Diem ever had. The leaders of the 1963 coup proved much less competent than the man they replaced. They squabbled and purged many of the government's best leaders because of past loyalties to Diem.
Vietnamese Communist leaders hailed the coup as a "gift," telling the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett that "the Americans have done something that we haven't been able to do for nine years and that was get rid of Diem." The ineffectiveness of the government that replaced Diem led to the fall of successive South Vietnamese governments, stimulating the North Vietnamese offensive that compelled the U.S. to intervene on the ground.
During its remaining years, the Obama administration might have to decide whether to promote the removal of autocratic leaders in places like Syria, Egypt and perhaps even Afghanistan. Unfortunately, today's policy makers may be led astray by most of what they have read on Vietnam. Gordon Goldstein's book "Lessons in Disaster," the favorite Vietnam book of this White House, recycles past caricatures of Diem as a corrupt and ineffective autocrat, and it ignores the difficulties of governing an authoritarian society at war.
Such renderings of history sustain a narrative of Vietnam as inherently unwinnable. The guardians of that narrative defend it at all costs, for it undergirds the aversion to military intervention that has predominated among American liberals since Vietnam. In truth, the U.S. stood on the right side in Vietnam. But individual Americans behaved badly and led the U.S. and South Vietnam to disaster.
Mr. Moyar is the author of "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965."
Comments
Post a Comment