Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (56 page)

The recommendations of spring became the policies of summer; but key American officials, alarmed by the deteriorating position of free world forces around the world, pushed for more sooner. On 19 July, successful Vietcong terrorist activities in the South led William Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, to recommend to General Lyman Lemnitzer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he begin ‘evaluating military measures which the U.S. might institute in reprisal against North Vietnam’.
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As Robert Komer, a member of the National Security Council Staff, advised his colleague Walt Rostow, ‘After Laos, and with Berlin on the horizon, we cannot afford to go less than all-out in cleaning up South Vietnam.’
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However, the advisers’ unanimous agreement on the goal hid their disagreement about appropriate tactics. His search for a solution led Kennedy to send in October a special fact-finding mission to Vietnam headed by General Maxwell Taylor, featuring Rostow and counter-terrorist expert Edward Lansdale. Among other things, the President ordered Taylor to ‘evaluate what could be accomplished by the introduction of SEATO [South-East Asia Treaty Organisation] or United States forces into Vietnam’.
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The resulting report, delivered to the President on 3 November, represented a sharply escalated American commitment wrapped in optimistic ribbons. The Presidential emissaries were convinced that they had seen one of ‘Khrushchev’s “wars of liberation”’ in action. Believing that the situation was ‘serious’ but ‘by no means hopeless’, the report recommended ‘a shift in the American relations to the Vietnamese effort from advice to limited partnership ... at all levels Americans must as friends and partners - not as arms-length advisers - show them how the job might be done’.
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During the next twelve days the President and his senior aides and officials debated the future of American policy in Vietnam. Taylor wanted American soldiers deployed in Vietnam, an option Rostow also endorsed.
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Defense Secretary McNamara revealed himself to be one of the hardliners in the administration, arguing that ‘the fall of South Vietnam to Communism would lead to the fairly rapid extension of Communist control in the rest of the mainland South-east Asia right down to Indonesia’. In urging an enlarged American commitment, however, the Defense Secretary also told the President that ‘the ultimate possible extent of our military commitment must be faced.... I believe we can assume that the maximum US forces required on the ground will not exceed (6-8) divisions, or about (220,000) men. ...’
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As was his habit, Kennedy reflected on the range of available options to various visitors, including Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who came to the White House on 7 November. The President convened the crucial meeting of the National Security Council eight days later. It was obvious that he retained doubts about the American commitment to South Vietnam, stating ‘that he could even make a rather strong case against intervening in an area 10,000 miles away against 16,000 guerrillas with a native army of 200,000, where millions have been spent with no success’. Kennedy also asked General Lemnitzer how he could justify an expanded military commitment in Vietnam while a Communist government remained in Cuba. Lemnitzer ‘hastened to add that the Joint Chiefs of Staff feel that even at this point the United States should go into Cuba’.
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But it was at least partly because the United States was
not
going into Cuba that Kennedy, on 22 November 1961, approved NSAM-111. After receiving an opinion from the State Department’s legal adviser that international law allowed the United States to send troops to Vietnam, Kennedy granted some but not all of the Taylor Report’s requests for additional American soldiers. At the same time he authorised increased American logistical support for ARVN (Army of the Republic of South Vietnam) forces as well as personnel and equipment to improve the ‘military-political Intelligence system’ and such economic aid ‘as may be required to permit the GVN’ (South Vietnam government) to pursue a ‘vigorous flood relief and rehabilitation program’.
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The President had rejected the two extremes, a negotiated settlement or immediate deployment of US combat troops. Instead, in keeping with his usual practice, he had chosen the middle course, transforming the American presence from an advisory role into a joint venture. In so doing, he had Americanised the war, casting in stone the US commitment to the conflict. In the future the debate would not be over whether Washington should let down its ally. American officials would be forced to wrestle with the question: should the United States itself admit defeat in its challenge to a Communist insurgency? A turning point had come: Kennedy had crossed a Rubicon from beyond which neither he nor his successors could return unscathed.

American advisers streamed into Vietnam, their number trebling from 3,205 in December 1961 to over 9,000 one year later. An expanded counter-insurgency programme, Project Beefup, began with the arrival of armoured personnel carriers and over 300 military aircraft made in America.
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But neither American men nor material made the difference. By the end of 1962 the Vietcong had regained the initiative. The best the President could report at his 12 December news conference was: ‘We don’t see the end of the tunnel, but I must say I don’t think it is darker than it was a year ago, and in some ways lighter.’
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Given that the Cuban missile crisis had wiped out any chance of the United States eliminating the Communist Fidel Castro from his base ninety-one miles from the American shore, these words were grim tidings. Shortly after this, the battle of Ap Bac on 2 January 1963 destroyed any remaining American illusions. For years high-ranking US military men had maintained that if the Vietcong forswore their guerrilla tactics in favour of a set-piece battle, the ARVN forces would triumph. In granting this wish, the Vietcong decisively proved their mettle. Called in by American adviser John Paul Vann, more than 1,200 of South Vietnam’s best troops, ferried by waves of American helicopters, came to the village of Ap Tan Thoi to capture a Vietcong radio transmitter. Three American advisers died that day, as did sixty-one ARVN men. But the Vietcong, having downed five American helicopters and hit nine others, escaped the trap with their transmitter intact. Worse, the ARVN general refused to order his men to attack. As
New York Times
reporter David Halberstram wrote, US officials in Saigon were bewildered by this turn of events.
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Increasingly Americans found their explanation in the failure of the Diem government. Diem had decided that his government could not bear the political cost which would follow if ARVN commanders listened to American advisers and began intensive, higher-casualty missions against the Vietcong. The South Vietnam leader instead ordered his field commanders to avoid extended confrontation. The result was the rout at Ap Bac.
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Moreover, having paid lip-service to American requests for political, social and economic reforms, during 1962 Diem instead embarked on a crackdown against his critics. Counselled by his secretive and increasingly demented brother Nhu, Diem expelled reporters from CBS and NBC and banned the sale of
Newsweek
. His actions exposed the frustrations and futility of dealing with such an ally. Throughout the Cold War the United States often had the ill-luck to have extremely venal allies while the Communist system nurtured surrogates whose sins could better be described as mortal. In the eyes of God, mortal transgressions are far worse; but joint operations are easier with committed, ideological murderers than with corrupt, avaricious surrogates.

The domestic politics of South Vietnam took a decided turn for the worse in May 1963. The long-standing hostility between Diem’s minority Catholic government and the resentful Buddhist majority constituting some 80 per cent of the population erupted into open confrontation on 8 May. A celebration of the Buddha’s birthday turned into a bloody riot as South Vietnamese police used tear-gas, clubs and gunfire to stop Buddhists attempting to fly religious flags. American officials reported the deaths of six children and two adults.
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Police repression only ignited further demonstrations. While the Buddhists sought only the same religious freedom given to Catholics, Diem insisted that ‘the NLF and the Vietcong are exploiting the situation’ and refused concessions.
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The culmination came on 11 June when a seventy-three-year-old Buddhist monk, Trich Quang Duc, immolated himself at a busy Saigon crossroads.
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Suddenly the local clash had become an American crisis. Kennedy himself believed that ‘no news picture in history has generated as much emotion around the world’. Even worse, from Washington’s point of view, was Diem’s refusal to follow American advice and make concessions to the protesters. Negotiations with the Buddhists came to naught and another monk burnt himself. Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu responded by telling CBS News on 1 August that the Buddhists had merely ‘barbecued a bonze [monk] with imported gasoline’. The State Department instructed US ambassador Frederick Nolting to advise Diem to get his sister-in-law out of the country as White House staffers lost any hope that the current South Vietnam government could make the changes American advisers thought were necessary to win the war.
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The American solution was obvious: another government. As the State Department had concluded that ‘We do not know whether Diem really will do the things he must if his regime is to survive,’ Washington moved to cut its ties with the family it had long succoured.
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American diplomats informed South Vietnam’s Vice-President Nguyen Ngoc Tho that the United States would support him if Diem lost power. The President played his part, signing NSAM-249 which adopted once again a middle-of-the-road position. Rejecting an American departure or an all-out military campaign, it merely recommended increased military assistance and more advisers.
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Kennedy also selected the hardline Republican Henry Cabot Lodge II to be American ambassador and the President’s personal emissary, telling him at their meeting on 15 August that ‘apparently the Diem government was entering a terminal phase’.
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Kennedy’s decisions made his prediction reality. Diem’s regime had, of course, long been plagued by abortive coups. But, when in August the most serious bid failed as the South Vietnamese generals lost their nerve, Lodge had approved the coup in advance.

Attempting to make sense out of chaotic reports from the field, Kennedy sent two investigative missions to South Vietnam in September. The second one featured a return by Taylor, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accompanied this time by Defence Secretary McNamara. They returned in optimistic spirits, telling the President that the American advisers, now numbering 16,000, might actually be withdrawn in 1965 if things went well. Taylor and McNamara also recommended withdrawing a 1,000-men construction battalion by the end of the year.
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On 11 October Kennedy approved the implementation of the McNamara-Taylor recommendations but directed that no public announcement of the troop withdrawal be made.
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American relations with Diem continued to deteriorate, however. Nhu now publicly attacked the United States, stating that American aid reductions had ‘initiated a process of disintegration in Vietnam’. Persistent rumours reached Washington that Nhu was talking to the Communists. The ARVN generals once more approached American officials, seeking to ascertain the American reaction if they staged a coup. Meanwhile, in South Vietnam, Lodge, who viewed himself as a proconsul rather than presidential envoy, orchestrated US support for the ARVN dissidents, keeping the President informed by a series of private cables. As October ended Kennedy’s main preoccupation was to preserve ‘control and cutout’ - the ability to retain command over the coup without sacrificing deniability should things go badly.
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Finally, on 1 November, All Saints Day, the expected happened. ARVN officers, following their American-edited script, took over the Saigon government. What was not in the script was their execution of Diem and Nhu, unconvincingly portrayed as suicide. Those deaths haunted the President, particularly once he learnt that the United States probably could have saved their lives.
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Yet in a speech prepared for delivery on the afternoon of 22 November 1963 the President intended to warn Americans that they ‘dare not weary of the task’ of supporting South Vietnam, no matter how ‘risky and costly’ that decision might be.
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When Kennedy died that same day, he left behind a country determined to worship at the grave of a President whom, in truth, it had not particularly respected in life. The mythologising of JFK was given every encouragement by the Kennedy family, who were determined to use Jack’s death to further the career of his brother. Although Robert in fact remained a supporter of the war for some time after his brother’s death, the Kennedy publicity machine began obfuscating his track record as soon as it became clear in early 1968 that President Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war made him vulnerable to a primary challenge. By the time of Robert’s assassination that June, the myth was well established that Jack Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam if only he had lived.

Yet, as we have seen, serious historical evidence for such arguments is scant. Much has been made, for example, of Kennedy’s September 1963 interview with Walter Cronkite, America’s most respected television journalist (specially arranged to mark the transition of the networks to thirty-minute nightly news broadcasts). Determined to use the interview to pressure Diem and his brother, Kennedy explained that, ‘In the final analysis it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it.’ The President then explicitly told Diem on nationwide American television how he should conduct his country’s internal affairs: stop the repressive anti-Buddhist actions, change policy and personnel or forfeit American support. Similarly, on 14 November, at his last press conference, the President defined ‘our object’ as ‘to bring Americans home [and] permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country’.
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Only two months before, however, he had told another evening news broadcast that ‘we should not withdraw’. This was in fact more consistent with the policy he was actually pursuing. Such contradictory utterances simply convey Kennedy’s dismay at the choices he faced: the same alternatives which had faced Eisenhower earlier and which were to face Johnson and Nixon thereafter. In all four cases, the President of the moment found it impossible to pull out and nakedly abandon South Vietnam.