Did U.S.-Blessed Coup Spur Vietnam Losses?
Dec. 3, 2002 -- -- President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam had come to power in the 1950s with American assistance, and was expected to help America defeat communism in Vietnam. But by 1963, it didn't seem to be working out so well.
Despite all the propaganda we put out that we were winning the war, we were losing it," said historian David Halberstam, who covered the war for The New York Times.
"He wouldn't let his commanders fight," Halberstam said. "He hated it when they took casualties, and by early 1963, the war was virtually over."
So when South Vietnamese armed forces ousted Diem in a violent two-day coup in November 1963, they apparently had the blessing of the Kennedy administration in United States, which may have acted partly out of fear Diem might strike a deal to create a coalition government with the communist rebels of North Vietnam.
During the coup, Diem and secret police chief, Ngo Dinh Nuh — Ngo Dinh Diem's brother and chief adviser — were assassinated while trying to gain safe passage out of the country.
Though the idea of replacing Diem may have looked good in the short term, his death may have wound up haunting the United States for decades. The shaky military regime that took over in the South, and it's faltering efforts to fight the North, led to the gradual increase of U.S. armed involvement in the ultimately disastrous Vietnam War.
Within a year of the regime change, U.S. forces in Vietnam had tripled. Over the next 12 years, the level reached approximately 500,000 U.S. troops. Overall, 50,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives were lost. North Vietnam ultimately won the war and the American psyche emerged bruised and battered.
"[In] the underdeveloped world … these things are often outside your control," Halberstam said, "and your acts often trigger things in that part of the world that are the exact opposite of what you wanted them to have triggered."
The Kennedy administration had inherited a delicate cold war balancing act in Southeast Asia. By 1963, there were 17,000 American advisers in South Vietnam helping that country's army defeat a communist insurgency headed by Ho Chi Minh, fighting with indigenous rebels from North Vietnam, the Viet Cong.
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