Diem? Ngo Dinh Diem is in a category of one. There was nobody else like him. In spite of his faults he was so much better a person than JFK who plotted in the oval office to have him overthrown and murdered because he would not play ball the way JFK wanted him to play ball.
Kennedy was busy with his affairs from Mafia mistresses to LSD proponents and after having Diem killed he was assassinated just three weeks later.
Diem was trying to impose Catholicism on a country that was still primarily Buddhist, it’s no wonder that the South Vietnamese government was never particularly popular and that folks weren’t particularly motivated to fight for it.
Yes if only he hadn't attacked the Buddhist majority, outlaw elections completely instead of just banning communists and allow kleptocrats into the government. South Vietnam could've won the war without American intervention.
False choice. Diem was a first class low life. And a “right wing” dictatorship running death squads....to protect you from communism, is the stupidest course a nation can take.
“We have seized power with violence, and are murdering the opposition....to protect you from people who will use violence to seize power and would murder the opposition.
This only makes sense in central and south America. Washington and Madison didn’t do it that way.