Flaming, Monks and the Fall of Diem

The Kennedy administration’s desire to stop the falling dominoes caused U.S. officials to turn a blind eye toward the essential unpopularity and corruption of the Diem regime. Diem’s cronies were put into high civil and military positions, and although a small number of urban South Vietnamese prospered under Diem, the rural majority fared poorly. Moreover, the Catholic Diem became tyrannical in his support of the nation’s Catholic minority and openly abused the Buddhist majority. The world was soon horrified by a series of extreme protest demonstrations: Buddhists monks doused themselves in gasoline and set themselves ablaze in the streets of Saigon.

By mid-1963, the Kennedy administration determined that the Diem regime was no longer viable. President Kennedy secretly allowed the CIA to plot the murder of Diem in a U.S.-backed military coup that overthrew him on November 1, 1963. Diem’s death unleashed a series of coups that made South Vietnam even more unstable over the next two years and encouraged the communists to escalate the war, now fueled by increasing Soviet and Chinese aid.

Rolling Thunder

Hindsight, according to a well-worn cliche, is always 20/20, and historians critical of the Kennedy administration often blame JFK for miring the nation in a hopeless war. Actually, evidence exists that, in the months and weeks before his assassination, President Kennedy, recognizing that only the Vietnamese could ultimately resolve the conflict, was planning a withdrawal. Perhaps. What is certain is that Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, moved vigorously to oppose North Vietnamese insurgents, authorizing the CIA to oversee diversionary raids on the northern coast while the navy conducted electronic espionage in the Gulf of Tonkin. The new president also named General William Westmoreland to head the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) and increased the number of military “advisors” to 23,000. Nevertheless, faced with a succession of weak Saigon governments, President Johnson continued to weigh the odds. The domino theory was persuasive, but the conflict began to look increasingly hopeless. In February 1965, LBJ sent his personal advisor, McGeorge Bundy, on a fact-finding mission to Saigon.

Suddenly, action by the Viet Cong moved the president’s hand. On February 7, Viet Cong units attacked U.S. advisory forces and the headquarters of the U.S. Army 52nd Aviation Battalion, near Pleiku, killing nine Americans and wounding 108. Bundy, Westmoreland, and U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor recommended a strike into North Vietnam. Operation Flaming Dart retaliated against an enemy barracks near Dong Hoi, provoking a Viet Cong counterstrike on February 10 against a U.S. barracks at Qui Nhon. The next day, U.S. forces struck back with a long program of air strikes deep into the North. Code named Rolling Thunder, the operation formally began on March 2, 1965, and marked the start of a course of escalation as 50,000 new ground troops were sent to Vietnam, ostensibly to “protect” U.S. air bases.

Escalation and Vietnamization

Johnson’s strategy was to continue a gradual escalation of the war, bombing military targets in a war of attrition that would not provoke overt intervention from China or the U.S.S.R. This scheme proved to be a no-win strategy that only prolonged the war. In an aggressive military campaign, success is measured by objectives attained—cities captured, military targets eliminated—but in a war of attrition, the only measure of success is body count. To be sure, American forces produced a massive body count among the enemy, but, just as Buddhist monks were willing to set themselves aflame, this enemy was prepared to die.

Motivated by nationalistic passion, the North Vietnamese did more than militarily infiltrate the South. Special political cadres won widespread support from the rural populace of the South. With this support, the Viet Cong enjoyed great mobility throughout the country, often fighting from a complex network of tunnels that were all but invisible. True, the growing numbers of U.S. troops were successful in clearing enemy territory. Yet U.S. numbers were never great enough to occupy that territory, and, once cleared, battle zones were soon overrun again. President Johnson and his advisors began to recognize that the war would not be won by U.S. intervention, and military efforts were increasingly directed toward Vietnamization—giving the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) the tools and training to take over more and more of the fighting, so that U.S. forces could ultimately disengage. That word, Vietnamization, was endlessly repeated as a mantra of American war policy, even as it became increasingly apparent that the South Vietnamese did not support their own government and had little will to fight.

Hearts and Minds

In the early stages of the war, President Kennedy had spoken of the need to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people. And even as America’s technologically advanced weaponry (including napalm incendiary bombs and highly toxic chemical agents to defoliate the jungle and expose the enemy) destroyed the country, the hearts and minds of the people remained elusive targets.

Hell, No! We Won’t Go!

The fact is that American war policy had not only failed to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, but it was rapidly losing influence over the hearts and minds of citizens of the United States. President Johnson increasingly relied on the Selective Service system—the draft—to supply troops. Relatively well-off young people could often avoid conscription through student deferments (college enrollment skyrocketed during the war) and by other means. Less-privileged and minority youth bore the brunt of the draft, a fact that stirred resentment and unrest, especially in the African-American community.

But antiwar sentiment was hardly confined to black America. What rapidly evolved into a full-blown antiwar movement began with leftist college students and peace activists. And its more Americans came home in “body bags,” the movement spread into the mainstream. College campuses first served as centers of discussion about and against the war, and then. they became the staging areas for demonstrations, including a series of marches on Washington starting in 1965 and continuing through 1968 and again in 1971.

Antiwar protest widened what was popularly called the generation gap, pitting young people against “anyone over 30.” The antiwar movement became associated with a general counterculture movement, which featured young people in long hair (for both sexes) and wearing what to their elders seemed bizarre gypsy-hobo outfits. Such youngsters called themselves hippies and ostentatiously indulged in “recreational” drugs (such as marijuana and the hallucinogenic LSD) and “recreational” sex. Government officials assumed that the entire peace movement was backed by communists and used the FBI as well as the CIA (illegally) to infiltrate antiwar organizations. True, some organizations associated with the movement were undoubtedly subversive; however, most protesters were mainstream individuals, aged 20 to 29, who were simply disgusted and outraged by the war.

The student fringe of the peace movement became increasingly vocal during the 1960s, with demonstrations—sometimes destructive—disrupting and even temporarily closing down some college campuses. In mass demonstrations across the country, young men burned their draft registration cards and chanted, “Hell, no! We won’t go!” So-called “confrontations” between demonstrators and police or even National Guardsmen became commonplace.