Kennedy

by Ted Sorensen

  Finally, a more limited program was approved. The small contingent of American military advisers was tripled, with officers assigned at the battalion level as well as to regiments, to advise in combat as well as training and to aid in unconventional as well as conventional warfare. American logistic support was increased, and money and instructors were made available to augment the size of South Vietnam’s Civil Guard and Self-defense Forces as well as her army. To demonstrate his support, to obtain an independent firsthand report and to make clear to Diem his insistence that Diem’s own efforts be improved, the President dispatched Vice President Johnson on a tour of Southeast Asia, including a lengthy stopover at Saigon.

  But throughout 1961 the situation in Vietnam continued to deteriorate. The area ruled by guerrilla tactics and terror continued to grow. American instructors—accompanying Vietnamese forces in battle and instructed to fire if fired upon—were being killed in small but increasing numbers. The Vice President’s report urged that the battle against Communism be joined in Southeast Asia with strength and determination. The key to what is done by Asians, he said, is confidence in the United States, in our power, our will and our understanding. In late October a new high-level mission to Vietnam, headed by Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow, visited Vietnam preparatory to a major Presidential review.

  A new set of recommendations proposed a series of actions by the American and Vietnamese governments. Once again, the most difficult was the commitment of American combat troops. South Vietnam’s forces already outnumbered the enemy by ten to one, it was estimated, and far more could be mobilized. But many believed that American troops were needed less for their numerical strength than for the morale and will they could provide to Diem’s forces and for the warning they would provide to the Communists. The President was not satisfied on either point. He was unwilling to commit American troops to fighting Asians on the Asian mainland for speculative psychological reasons.

  Nevertheless, at this moment more than any other, the pressures upon the President to make that commitment were at a peak. All his principal advisers on Vietnam favored it, calling it the “touchstone” of our good faith, a symbol of our determination. But the President in effect voted “no”—and only his vote counted.

  The key to his “vote” could be found in his speech on the Senate floor on the French-Indochinese War on the sixth of April, 1954:

  … unilateral action by our own country…without participation by the armed forces of the other nations of Asia, without the support of the great masses of the peoples [of Vietnam]…and, I might add, with hordes of Chinese Communist troops poised just across the border in anticipation of our unilateral entry into their kind of battleground—such intervention, Mr. President, would be virtually impossible in the type of military situation which prevails in Indochina…an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, “an enemy of the people” which has the sympathy and covert support of the people.

  That year he had watched the French, with a courageous, well-equipped army numbering hundreds of thousands, suffer a humiliating defeat and more than ninety thousand casualties. Now the choice was his. If the United States took over the conduct of the war on the ground, he asked, would that not make it easier for the Communists to say we were the neo-colonialist successors of the French? Would we be better able to win support of the villagers and farmers—so essential to guerrilla warfare—than Vietnamese troops of the same color and culture? No one knew whether the South Vietnamese officers would be encouraged or resentful, or whether massive troop landings would provoke a massive Communist invasion—an invasion inevitably leading either to nuclear war, Western retreat or an endless and exhausting battle on the worst battleground he could choose.

  What was needed, Kennedy agreed with his advisers, was a major counterinsurgency effort—the first ever mounted by this country. South Vietnam could supply the necessary numbers—and would have to supply the courage and will to fight, for no outsider could supply that. But the United States could supply better training, support and direction, better communications, transportation and intelligence, better weapons, equipment and logistics—all of which the South Vietnamese needed, said his advisers, if they were to reorient their effort to fight guerrilla battles.

  Formally, Kennedy never made a final negative decision on troops. In typical Kennedy fashion, he made it difficult for any of the prointervention advocates to charge him privately with weakness. He ordered the departments to be prepared for the introduction of combat troops, should they prove to be necessary. He steadily expanded the size of the military assistance mission (2,000 at the end of 1961, 15,500 at the end of 1963) by sending in combat support units, air combat and helicopter teams, still more military advisers and instructors and 600 of the green-hatted Special Forces to train and lead the South Vietnamese in anti-guerrilla tactics.

  The Kennedy administration’s decision to carry out, with increased aid, this country’s long-standing commitment to Vietnam was officially sealed and conveyed in a public exchange of letters between Presidents Kennedy and Diem on December 15, 1961. The wording of both letters was carefully worked out by both governments, although, as noted below, Diem balked at many reforms. Kennedy placed no limits of time or amount on our assistance, noting only that it would no longer be necessary once North Vietnam ceased its aggression. But he did stress throughout the letter that primary responsibility would remain with the people of South Vietnam—that Americans were there only to help them—and that he was “confident that the Vietnamese people will preserve their independence.” In other statements he re-emphasized the fact that this remained their war to win, not ours, depending more upon their effort than ours, that it had to be won in the South as a political as well as a military conflict.

  This meant, the President wrote Diem in a separate message—also based on the Taylor report—that South. Vietnam’s military effort would have to be fully mobilized, reorganized and given the initiative; that specific tax, land, education and other social and political reforms would have to be instituted, including a more broadly based national government, improved civil liberties, fewer political restraints and more assistance at the village level; and that without such assurances and cooperation, including joint American participation in key military planning, American support would be useless. The United States could not instill morale in Diem’s troops, improve his and their rapport with the villagers, or confer a sense of national identity on the country as a whole. That was up to Diem. But Diem’s only noticeable response was a series of anti-American stories in the controlled Vietnamese press.

  Kennedy recognized far more clearly than most of his advisers that military action alone could not save Vietnam. As a Congressman back from Indochina in 1951, he had warned that the southward drive of Communism required its opponents to build “strong native non-Communist sentiment within these areas and rely on that as a spearhead of defense rather than upon…force of arms.” As a Senator in 1954, he had cited the dangers and inaccuracies inherent in the long years of assurances given by French and American officials that the Vietnamese people were truly free and independent.

  But as President, unfortunately, his effort to keep our own military role in Vietnam from overshadowing our political objectives was handicapped by the State Department’s inability to compete with the Pentagon. The task force report in the spring of 1961, for example, had focused almost entirely on military planning. A five-year economic plan, “a long-range plan for the economic development of Southeast Asia on a regional basis,” a diplomatic appeal to the United Nations and other miscellaneous ideas were somewhat vaguely and loosely thrown in to please the President. But there was no concrete definition of the civil effort essential to the success of the military effort, nor was there in the months and years that followed. Economic aid and a rural rehabilitation program were increased. But the guerrillas kept much of the countryside too frightened or hostile to cooperate, repeatedly ambushed health and education workers, and bur
ned schools and other government centers. “You cannot carry out a land reform program,” Secretary McNamara said, “if the local peasant leaders are being systematically murdered.” No amount of social and economic assistance in South Vietnam would end the ambitions of North Vietnam. American assistance, moreover, was not accompanied by the internal reforms required to make it effective.

  A full-scale articulation by the President of this country’s long-range political and economic aims for Southeast Asia might have strengthened this neglected nonmilitary side of his Vietnam policy. The Taylor report recommended a major television address. But unwilling to give Vietnam a status comparable to Berlin, the President chose to keep quiet. Even his news conference statements on Vietnam were elusive. Moreover, the new military efforts mounted late in 1961 and early 1962 seemed initially to be paying off. The rapid disintegration taking place in the fall of 1961 was stemmed, especially in the coastal provinces where the Vietcong had threatened to cut the country in two. American helicopters in particular provided a new and effective challenge to the guerrillas. From time to time the building of U.S. forces in the area continued, particularly with the addition of more airpower early in 1963. The President hopefully reported to the Congress in January of that year that “the spear point of aggression has been blunted in Vietnam.”

  In fact, the neglected civilian side of the effort had already begun to handicap the military side, and in 1963 these handicaps would become evident. Taylor’s 1961 report had warned Kennedy—and Kennedy had politely warned Diem—that the people around the Presidential palace in Saigon were often corrupt and ambitious, that Diem’s army was weakened by politics and preference, that his treatment of political opponents had stifled the nation’s nationalism and that Diem’s own lack of popularity in the countryside was handicapping antiguerrilla efforts. The ever suspicious and stubborn Diem had promised reform, but few reforms were forthcoming. American military advice was requested, but it was still often disregarded—in an overexpansion, for example, of the “strategic hamlet” program which sought to clear areas of all guerrillas and then protect the inhabitants in newly constructed and fortified settlements. Antiguerrilla tactics were taught but ignored. Funds were sought for additional Vietnamese battalions, but those battalions were too stationary, too cautious about going out to meet the enemy. Diem and his family still meddled deeply in army politics.

  As President Diem became more and more remote from the people, his government was increasingly dominated by an increasingly unbalanced man, the President’s brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. The Catholic Diem, his brother and his brother’s wife—the sharp-tongued Madame Nhu—were accused of religious persecution by powerful Buddhist leaders, many of whom for political reasons fanned small instances of personal discrimination into national crises.

  In mid-1963 the picture worsened rapidly. Diem’s troops broke up a demonstration of Buddhists protesting a ban on their banner. Nhu’s Special Forces raided Buddhist pagodas. Pictures of Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in protest—as well as Madame Nhu’s cruel remarks on the “barbecue show” sacrifice of “so-called holy men”—brought calls in Congress to cut off all aid. Vietnamese students rioted against the government. Officials not personally committed to the family—including Madame Nhu’s father, the Ambassador to Washington—resigned in protest against new repressions. The maintenance of internal security, employing the most arbitrary means and the most valuable troops, began to occupy the full attention of the shaky Diem regime. The prosecution of the war inevitably faltered. Nhu was reported ready to make a secret deal with the North, and both he and his wife publicly castigated the United States for its efforts to broaden the government and get back to the war.

  The religious persecutions deeply offended John Kennedy. “Human…rights are not respected,” he pointedly said in his September, 1963, UN speech, “when a Buddhist priest is driven from his pagoda.” He further bristled when brother Nhu, angered at American interference, said publicly there were too many U.S. troops in Vietnam. “Any time the government of South Vietnam would suggest it,” said the President, “the day after it was suggested we would have some troops on their way home.” But while publicly deploring “repressive actions,” he at first paid too little attention to those members of the Congress and American press—particularly the heavily restricted correspondents in Saigon—who complained that we were aiding a dictator. He had generally been more careful than his subordinates to talk of our support for the aspirations of the country, not the individual regime. But sometimes the national security required this country to aid dictators, particularly in the newer nations unprepared for true democracy. He knew that we were dangerously dependent on one man, but there was no simple way to force a broadening of that man’s government or the development of more representative civilian leaders without endangering the entire war effort.

  By late summer, 1963, he had become more concerned. Growing disunity and disorder within the non-Communist camp in Saigon further handicapped the national war effort. Countering guerrilla warfare, as he had stressed in 1961, was more of a political than a military problem; and a government incapable of effective political action and popular reform would continue to lose ground steadily throughout the country.

  In a long letter to Diem, the President reviewed frankly the troubled relations between the two governments. Some of the methods used by some members of your government, he wrote Diem, may make it impossible to sustain public support in Vietnam for the struggle against the Communists. Unless there can be important changes and improvements in the apparent relation between the government and the people in your country, he added, American public and Congressional opinion will make it impossible to continue without change their joint efforts. American cooperation and American assistance will not be given, he stressed, to or through individuals whose acts and words seem to run against the purpose of genuine reconciliation and unified national effort against the Communists.

  He urged Diem to ease his censorship and harassment of American reporters in Vietnam—for that, said Kennedy, can only impair our confidence. He emphasized that American officials and officers in Vietnam, while respecting that country’s independence, must participate extensively in decisions affecting a situation in which our own resources, and thousands of members of our armed forces, are so heavily committed. The consistent rejection of our advisers’ advice, Kennedy knew, had made much of our aid and effort useless.

  At the same time—September, 1963—he was surprisingly candid in two television interviews. He agreed with one reporter that we had become locked into a policy from which it was difficult to shift. He told another that we were attempting to use our influence to persuade the Diem government to take the steps necessary to gain popular support, although “we can’t expect these countries to do everything the way we want.” To another he was even more explicit, stating that Diem could regain the support of the people and win the war only

  with changes in policy and perhaps with personnel…. I don’t think the war can be won unless the people support the effort and, in my opinion, in the last two months the government has gotten out of touch with the people…. In the first analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam.

  These public statements were an exception. Private pressures were not. A controversial cable dispatched during the President’s last August weekend at the Cape had gone even further, indicating that the United States would not block any spontaneous military revolt against Diem. (Critics of this cable somehow assumed that a message from Kennedy could either start or stop the growing tide of discontent among the Vietnamese officer corps.) In any event, no coup followed. Kennedy was increasingly doubtful that the war could ever be won with Diem, for whom he retained great personal admiration, but he nevertheless accepted the fact that the U.S. must not bring him down and would have to make
the best of his staying. His hope was to change Diem’s policies and personnel, not remove him.

  Kennedy remained unwilling, however, to promote or thwart any indigenous movements. He withheld all economic aid not directly related to the battlefront, including funds for Nhu’s Special Forces. And he strengthened the authority of new Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, the least friendly to Diem and family of all the State, Defense and CIA officials in Saigon, recalling the pro-Diem CIA station chief to Washington. Lodge urged dismissal of the Nhus and an end to Diem’s arbitrary actions.

  But these efforts were too late—and in vain. Their tardiness reflected the President’s dilemma. For eighteen months he had been skeptical of the reports from Diem’s backers. But he had been equally skeptical whether U.S. threats to remove Diem, if he did not make the necessary reforms, would have worked and whether his actual removal would have helped. He blamed himself for not building more of a political-economic-social side to the U.S. effort in Vietnam to offset the impact of new repressions on the population. Now it was too late. Diem refused to listen. The only Nhu to go anywhere was Madame Nhu, who—to his great annoyance—toured this country making vitriolic attacks on Kennedy’s policy. (Asked why so feminine a female would be so bitter in her attitudes, the President speculated that Madame Nhu—like a sharp-tongued American lady of note with whom he compared her—“resented getting her power through men.”)

  Kennedy’s advisers were more deeply divided on the internal situation in Saigon than on any previous issue. The State Department, by and large, reported that the political turmoil had seriously interfered with the war effort outside of Saigon, and that one of the many coups rumored almost weekly was certain to succeed if we kept hands off. The military and the CIA, on the other hand, spoke confidently of the war’s prosecution and Diem’s leadership, and questioned the likelihood of finding any equally able leader with the confidence of the people who could prosecute the war as vigorously.