Yeah, favor Catholics in a majority Buddhist country, that will win “hearts and minds”. /s
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.
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.
And yet Diem was the most effective figure on the South Vietnamese anti-communist political scene. Even the North Vietnamese basically admitted it.