Author Topic: Was Diem good? (Read 2552 times)

Tiffany · « **on:** June 12, 2014, 11:04:12 AM »

I read that Diem was a good Catholic leader, he allowed the Buddhist to practice, and our gov fell for the false VC propaganda like the monk ѕυιcιdєs. .
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/buddhist-immolates-himself-in-protest

claudel · « **Reply #1 on:** June 12, 2014, 06:07:34 PM »

Quote from: Tiffany

I read that Diem was a good Catholic leader, he allowed the Buddhist to practice, and our gov fell for the false VC propaganda like the monk ѕυιcιdєs.

You ask whether Ngo Dinh Diem was good. The short answer is no. A longer answer is no, he was bad; indeed, he was very bad, but as so often happens, he wasn't the worst villain in the international sandbox. On a smaller scale, Ngo was analogous to Hitler, who while profoundly wicked was small potatoes compared with the off-the-charts trio of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin.

"Our government," far from falling for VC or any other propaganda, was a big creator and exporter of its own propaganda, very little of which was reality-based. It was up to its neck in roughneck politics in Southeast Asia at that time. The list of US participants includes the CIA, mercenaries (both American and French), and military and civilian "advisers" of all sorts. The level of "management" (i.e., active interference in the affairs of a foreign power) of the Vietnamese situation increased markedly after the fall of Dien Bien Phu (May 1954), but at least the Eisenhower administration was more or less content with observing, at a certain remove, the dangerous and dicey jockeying for position and power then going on among the local commies (Ho Chi Minh's crowd) and the increasingly antagonistic Soviet (Jєωιѕн) Reds and Chinese Reds.

The waste matter came into contact with the electromechanical rotating device with the arrival of the Kennedy administration and its cadre of wacky pseudo-Christians and bloodthirsty Jews (many of whom were of the age and the educational and maturity level of today's average CI commenter), all of whom thought that the God they didn't believe in had given them a free pass to rearrange the entire world's affairs to suit themselves. To cut to the heart of the matter, Kennedy authorized ever more "advice" and subversion, and when Ngo and his family and their cronies, who had never actively resisted US interference (certainly not in public), didn't jump high enough to suit Washington, the CIA was authorized to back—more accurately, organize—a coup to replace Ngo and his crowd with people hardwired to DC.

By the way, it was no coincidence that the CIA and the adviser cadres also had close ties to various Buddhist leaders who wanted a bigger cut of the pie, too. Finding guys in their ranks nutty enough to immolate themselves for the cameras can't have been easy, but surely it was no harder than it has been for various terrorist groups, both foreign and domestic, who regularly find guys willing to blow themselves up for Allah or Obama or international Jewry.

Note that it has always been the claim of the Kennedy idolaters that Jack was shocked, shocked, to learn of the assassination of Ngo and his brother by the Vietnamese crowd acting for the CIA, which was supposed to send them all off to comfy exile somewhere. Oh sure. If JFK didn't actually give the order for the murder, he was at the very least well aware that it was in the cards when he authorized the coup. The fifty years' worth of claims that there would have been no Vietnam War had Jack not been killed by a horrid assassin, acting entirely alone, in Dallas aren't even worthy of the name fairy tales. They are outright lies.

JohnGrey · « **Reply #2 on:** June 27, 2014, 01:10:02 PM »

Quote from: claudel

You ask whether Ngo Dinh Diem was good. The short answer is no. A longer answer is no, he was bad; indeed, he was very bad, but as so often happens, he wasn't the worst villain in the international sandbox. On a smaller scale, Ngo was analogous to Hitler, who while profoundly wicked was small potatoes compared with the off-the-charts trio of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin.

"Our government," far from falling for VC or any other propaganda, was a big creator and exporter of its own propaganda, very little of which was reality-based. It was up to its neck in roughneck politics in Southeast Asia at that time. The list of US participants includes the CIA, mercenaries (both American and French), and military and civilian "advisers" of all sorts. The level of "management" (i.e., active interference in the affairs of a foreign power) of the Vietnamese situation increased markedly after the fall of Dien Bien Phu (May 1954), but at least the Eisenhower administration was more or less content with observing, at a certain remove, the dangerous and dicey jockeying for position and power then going on among the local commies (Ho Chi Minh's crowd) and the increasingly antagonistic Soviet (Jєωιѕн) Reds and Chinese Reds.

The waste matter came into contact with the electromechanical rotating device with the arrival of the Kennedy administration and its cadre of wacky pseudo-Christians and bloodthirsty Jews (many of whom were of the age and the educational and maturity level of today's average CI commenter), all of whom thought that the God they didn't believe in had given them a free pass to rearrange the entire world's affairs to suit themselves. To cut to the heart of the matter, Kennedy authorized ever more "advice" and subversion, and when Ngo and his family and their cronies, who had never actively resisted US interference (certainly not in public), didn't jump high enough to suit Washington, the CIA was authorized to back—more accurately, organize—a coup to replace Ngo and his crowd with people hardwired to DC.

By the way, it was no coincidence that the CIA and the adviser cadres also had close ties to various Buddhist leaders who wanted a bigger cut of the pie, too. Finding guys in their ranks nutty enough to immolate themselves for the cameras can't have been easy, but surely it was no harder than it has been for various terrorist groups, both foreign and domestic, who regularly find guys willing to blow themselves up for Allah or Obama or international Jewry.

Note that it has always been the claim of the Kennedy idolaters that Jack was shocked, shocked, to learn of the assassination of Ngo and his brother by the Vietnamese crowd acting for the CIA, which was supposed to send them all off to comfy exile somewhere. Oh sure. If JFK didn't actually give the order for the murder, he was at the very least well aware that it was in the cards when he authorized the coup. The fifty years' worth of claims that there would have been no Vietnam War had Jack not been killed by a horrid assassin, acting entirely alone, in Dallas aren't even worthy of the name fairy tales. They are outright lies.

What an excellent post! That said, I think you underestimate the degree of early involvement of the United States in Viet Nam, far prior to the Republic's loss at Điện Biên Phủ. Much of the hardware that had been requisitioned for the putative land invasion of Japan in 1945 was diverted to both Korea and Viet Nam, the latter for the use of the CIA.

Cato · « **Reply #3 on:** July 12, 2014, 03:30:23 PM »

Diem was a fine Catholic. He fought Communists his whole life. His brother even resisted Vatican II - which shows the good genes he came from.

He was bad in that he ended up getting arrested and killed. He might have saved South Vietnam if he had tightened up his security and αssαssιnαtҽd his opponents. He was in a difficult position being caught between the Communists and the USA.

claudel · « **Reply #4 on:** July 13, 2014, 12:24:38 AM »

Quote from: JohnGrey

What an excellent post! That said, I think you underestimate the degree of early involvement of the United States in Viet Nam, far prior to the Republic's loss at Điện Biên Phủ. Much of the hardware that had been requisitioned for the putative land invasion of Japan in 1945 was diverted to both Korea and Viet Nam, the latter for the use of the CIA.

Thank you for your comment, Mr.Grey. I saw it only today, since I am mostly a drive-by commenter.

I would say, in response to your second sentence, that it is less a matter of my "underestimating" early US involvement in Southeast Asia than of my discounting it. Why do I say I discount it? Because at the end of World War II, the US government never actually brought the entirety of its matériel or its freshly embedded intelligence apparatus home from any theater of war in which it had been involved. For people like Dean Acheson and William Donovan (and the latter's successor, Allen Dulles), the war was simply the prelude to a new era whose hallmark would be US domination. Their strong-arm boys would include men modeled on such as Curtis Le May, for whom no military tactic, however horrific, was off-limits. As for intelligence (i.e., espionage), anyone who has read a Le Carré novel will have an accurate picture of what US agents did: plant sleepers (inactive deep-cover agents) wherever the circuмstances permitted, and pay them off covertly for years or decades or however long was considered desirable.

In short, had the spot for a bit of military adventurism turned out to be the eastern coast of Africa or the Society Islands instead of Southeast Asia, the way to bet is that there would have been some sort of US intelligence or matériel presence or both there, too—all just ready and waiting for the fun to start.

Quote from: Cato

Diem was a fine Catholic. He fought Communists his whole life. His brother even resisted Vatican II - which shows the good genes he came from.

He was bad in that he ended up getting arrested and killed. He might have saved South Vietnam if he had tightened up his security and αssαssιnαtҽd his opponents. He was in a difficult position being caught between the Communists and the USA.

This is arrant nonsense. Learn a thing or two before shooting your mouth off, Cato.