Posted on 11/02/2023 11:31:11 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam, was executed in the back of an armored personnel carrier along with his younger brother and secret police chief, Ngo Dinh Nhu, the day after their government had been overthrown in a military coup.
Born into the Buddhist country’s Catholic elite, Diem was brought up as a French colonial administrator but fled Vietnam in 1950 under a death sentence from Ho Chi Minh’s nascent Vietminh. Over several years living and lecturing in the United States, he established his anti-communist bona fides with influential conservatives and was returned to his native country as Prime Minister when the U.S. inherited the foundering French war against nationalist guerrillas....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Yeah, favor Catholics in a majority Buddhist country, that will win “hearts and minds”. /s
The assassination was conducted with the permission of JFK and carried out by the CIA operatives in the Southern Viet gov’t.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/vietnam/2020-11-01/new-light-dark-corner-evidence-diem-coup-november-1963
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https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/1568/why-did-jfk-give-approval-for-the-cia-to-encourage-diems-deposal
Three weeks later, JFK would be dead in Dallas.
The chickens came home to roost.
Malcolm X wuz right.
> The assassination was conducted with the permission of JFK and carried out by the CIA operatives in the Southern Viet gov’t. <
And now a quote from Ho Chi Minh: “I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid.”
I wasn’t aware of this dynamic until today.
I would think it would be far better to work on a coalition government with Buddhists than with communists.
It’s not as if the great Buddha didn’t say many of the same things about the way to treat your fellow man as did Jesus.
Your average Buddhist is not really that hard to get along with.
Yep. I doubt JFK would have given a nod to this. That's probably the reason the CIA got rid of him.
The Buddhists who burned themselves to death to protest the Diem government were a minority faction led by a radical cleric named Tri Quang, who tried that tactic with subsequent South Vietnamese governments but was unsuccessful.
LBJ should have listened to Richard Nixon, who on more than one occasion in 1963 warned that the issue was not Diem and someone better but Diem and someone worse.
Similar thing in China before 1949. The ruling Kuomintang party was dominated by American-educated Methodists ruling a predominantly Buddhist/Confucist country.
The Marxist-Leninists who have ruled China since 1949 aren't very Buddhist or Confucianist.
Right, JFK and that creep Bobby pretended to be surprise and shocked at the murders of Diem and his brother
For sure they knew and signed off on it, too
Karma came up and bit both the Kennedy brothers.
Karma is a bit&h!
And yet Diem was the most effective figure on the South Vietnamese anti-communist political scene. Even the North Vietnamese basically admitted it.
Amen!!
John Kennedy pulled the plug on Laos the year before with his ridiculous neutrality agreement. The upshot was North Vietnam flooding the South, especially the border regions, with militants who could now operate from cross border sanctuaries in Laos itself and in Cambodia.
Of course Kennedy and his (mis)advisors blamed Diem for the growing chaos, and decided they had to pull the plug on Diem as well. We all know how that turned out.
There wouldn’t have been any Vietnam War, IMHO, if Nixon had been elected President in 1960. Instead, there would be a free and prosperous South Vietnam.
***On this date in 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam, was executed in the back of an armored personnel carrier along with his younger brother and secret police chief, Ngo Dinh Nhu***
I remember those days! Madame Nhu somehow figured into all of this. I remember come comedian saying that from South Vietnam “No Nhus is good news”
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