We tend to forget the religious war aspect to the Vietnam War. The French IndoChina (FIC) colony (mid 1800s) created an upper class that was largely Roman Catholic (RC) while much of the rural and lower class population remained Buddhist. When the North-South Vietnam partition (1954) took place, that put an even larger RC population moving to the South (Hanoi was the capital of FIC and strongly RC).
Ngô Đình Diệm was the nominative 1st President of S.Vietnam (S.V.) and, with his family [Ngô Đình], were exercising dictatorial power while cultivating US assistance as an anti-Communist leader. While fighting the North in a continuing civil war, the Ngô Đìnhs and their cohorts were also discriminating and suppressing the Buddhists and Montagnards within S.V. and favoring of their own RC minority.
The pot really started to boil in 1963 when Diệm used military force against the almost totally non-violent Buddhist monks and supporters leading to this famous act of self-sacrifice pictured previously. There were more self-immolations by various monks and Diệm's reactions of ever more force lost him all US Support as the US Embassy and Washington swung their support to the S.V. Military (largely Buddhist).
The fact that Diệm and his younger brother, Nhu, were overthrown and assassinated on November 1st of 1963, 3 weeks before JFK's assassination can be taken as coincidence, fate, or conspiracy at the reader's choice. For S.V., the resulting furor meant that no succeeding government was very strong nor able, in the end, to resist North Vietnam. As for the Buddhist monks and their desire for increased civil rights? The reunited Vietnam after the collapse of S.V. in 1975, put a great many people of all religions in their infamous re-education camps AND Vietnam is still officially atheist.
Thx - good post.
Good summary.
bttt