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 ...
Kennedy authorized the coup, the only thing he was naive about was he believed that Diem and his brother Nhu would be allowed to leave the country in exile. The one who really had it out for Diem was Averell Harriman who spent months coaxing Kennedy into plotting his overthrow.
Actually, the go ahead was from undersecretary Ball. Kennedy didnt know until after it was over. He was on vaca in Hayannisport.
Actually my money is on the Mob and CIA taking JFK out over the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
"(President Kennedy): I was shocked by the death of Diem and Nhu. I'd met Diem with Justice Douglas many years ago. He was an extraordinary character. While he became increasingly difficult in the last months, nevertheless over a ten-year period he'd held his country together, maintained its independence under very adverse conditions. The way he was killed made it particularly abhorrent."
JFK'S MEMOIR DICTATION ON THE ASSASSINATION OF DIEM
The other information that has been brought up since Nov. 22, 1963, is that at the time of his death, JFK , was planning on eventually withdrawing all U.S. troops from Vietnam. From a 2003 article by James Kenneth Galbraith, which he bases on the meticulous work of John M. Newman. "Newman was a Major in the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records—a talent he later applied to the CIA’s long-hidden archives on Lee Harvey Oswald."
Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam
The article states that from October 2nd, 1963, Kennedy was planning on withdrawing U.S. troops, after receiving a mission report completed by Robert McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor. The article also states at that same meeting: "At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal."
Newman made a chronological summery of the decision to withdraw troops, based on documents, info, etc. His second point is interesting, because:
"On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day:
'The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed.'"
So this decision was focusing on December, and Kennedy was under the impression in early October, that Diem would still be in power in December, but that they wouldn't discuss the withdrawal with him before-hand.
So why assassinate the President of a country, you are planning on withdrawing your troops from? I do not believe that John Kennedy authorized the assassination of Diem, his younger brother, or the secret police chief, all at the same time. and in the way it was conducted.
It appears to be monumentally stupid because it was monumentally stupid.
And ended up sending people like my only brother to fight in the jungles of Vietnam, for a government, and military that gave two shits about them. He came home, but was never the same, and died of a massive heart attack at the young age of 51. Vietnam was just another proxy war with Russia and China. The only ones who were victorious in Vietnam, were the ones who had investments in the military industrial complex, while destroying the lives of millions of other people.
Very true. The Buddhists and Confucists in China learned that the hard way.
In contrast, the Communists in Vietnam have generally stayed out of religious matters there.
I have read that when some US officials broached the subject of removing Diem with some South Vietnamese generals they were horrified by the idea. They hated Diem, but couldn’t think of anyone else who could hold the country together.
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