5. Personalism, Marxism and Strategic Hamlets

'' A personalist civilization is one whose structure and spirit are directed towards the development as persons of all individuals...who have as their ultimate end, to enable every individual to live and to exercise a maximum of initiative, responsibility, and spiritual life.''

" It is common to all the doctrines [that we have rejected] to regard the spiritual in any of its ultimate forms as a private affair of individual morality. This conception is characteristic of bourgeois idealism, which abandons society to the iron age;... it is characteristic of Marxist materialism, according to which spiritual authority exercises no primary initiative at all, in human affairs.''

'' Individualism is a system of morals, feelings, ideas and institutions in which individuals can be organized by their mutual isolation and defense. This was the ideology and prevailing structure of western bourgeois society... Man, in the abstract, unattached to any natural community, the sovereign lord of a liberty unlimited and undirected, turning towards others with a primary mistrust, calculation and self-vindication; institutions restricted to the assurance that these egoisms should not encroach upon one another, or to their betterment as a purely profit making association-- such is the rule of civilization now breaking up before our eyes, ... It is the very antithesis of personalism, and its dearest enemy''.

The reader is welcomed to the world of Personalism, a school of thought conceived by Ngo Dinh Nhu, Diem's younger brother, as the unofficial ideology of South VN in the 1950's. The above excerpts are from Emmanuel Mounier, a leftist [priest] philosopher who wrote a book exposing his new thoughts and ideas about man and his relationship with God in the 1930's. By espousing Mounier Personalist manifesto, Ngo Dinh Nhu showed his uncanny deftness in reading into his brother's mind. Diem must be pleased with his brother's choice of political ideology. It fitted perfectly with his own moral high ground. Mounier expanded later his Personalist views in other books until his untimely death in 1950 at the age of 45. He founded the literary magazine Esprit in 1932 and served as its director until his end, except for the Vichy period of 1941-44, where the publication was banned. It's still operating nowadays.

Nhu used and adapted Mounier's ideas to establish a kind of official thinking in the political apparatus of the Diem's administration. If Diem was a complex individual, his brother's character and personality were even more difficult to gauge. He was born in 1911 and went to France to study at the Ecole des Archives de Chartres. When he came back to VN, he worked in Hanoi as the chief documentalist in the National Library. His life would have been ordinary, had nothing happened to Diem his elder brother in 1954. Nhu did instigate some urban political rallies, along with union members to prepare for his brother's political comeback. Other than that, he lacked the charisma and exposure to launch his own ambitions.

What Nhu didn't have in political stature, he compensated with his intellectual stamina. As an archivist he was obviously a well read person. He was a quiet person with a quiet voice but his head was fuming with ideas and plans in the service of his beloved brother Diem. He was a perfect example of the ''eminence grise'' behind the throne. Unlike Diem who acted on instinct when he decided to move against his opponents, Nhu really thinks over carefully on every details before going into action. In that sense the two brothers were a perfect match, complementing one to another and more importantly having the same vision about the country.

Nhu the brain and the strategist thought what was lacking in the South was an ideology, an idea to fight against another idea [from Ho Chi Minh]. He visualized the North South conflict at an early stage, as a battleground between Marxism and a big void. In more than one way he had witnessed it in the experience against the sects. Specifically, there was an absence of a moral dimension to strike a counter balance to the Communist North. In that sense, he saw the struggle more in political terms, the kind of hearts and minds battle, thus as an ultimate outcome of the war. He was very obsessed by the Viet Minh tactics and its organization skill. The Communist apparatus from the bottom up with its ever present cadres on the ground, in small villages, where the final verdict will be decided, was for him the biggest threat. He envied uncle Ho, his prestige and infectious commitment, his entourage loyalty and the ensuing results!

Nhu wanted to copy the Marxist model, with a different and competitive ideology. How about freedom and democracy? Well, for Nhu that's a political cop out worthy only for low IQ demagogues and political chameleons. He understood Marxism, saw its weaknesses and perceived that it has no mileage on the passive and by nature indifferent Vietnamese masses, also being a foreign ideology. He found Mounier's ideas more attractive for Mounier attacked the bourgeois bastion from the right while the Marxists did it from the awkward left. Incidentally, I fell upon an article by a Russian author who dissected very carefully the dichotomy between Personalism and Marxism.

Nikolai Berdyaev in 1935 already exposed that conflict. He distinguished the individual from the person in very tedious and elaborate terms. ''The individual is a naturalistic category, biological and sociological and it appertains to the natural world. It--is an atom, indivisible, not having an inner life, it is anonymous. The individual as regards itself is entirely a racial and social being, only an element with the whole. Person signifies something altogether different. Person is a spiritual and religious category. Person is a form of being, higher than anything natural or social...''

Berdyaev went on to assert that ''the attitude of Marxism towards person is antagonistic. This is connected with the vagueness of its anthropology. The anti-personalism of Marx-- is a consequence of the anti-personalism of Hegel. Hegel acknowledged the sovereignty of the general over the individual... Since Marxism is interested exclusively in the general and is not interested in the individual, the weakest side of Marxism then appears to be its psychology... Marxism exalts human will, it wants to create a new man. But it also has a fanatical side, deeply debasing of man...'' Had Nhu read these lines from Berdyaev, he couldn't have agreed more. And may be he did. So much for philosophical abstractions! The challenge for the Diem regime was to translate these arcane concepts and make them palatable to the rank and file who didn't have master's degree in political science. Diem and Nhu weren't leftists either and they had to find a suitable compromise in order to put their ideology on track.

Nhu's version of Mounier Personalism in the end was a blend of Asian Confucianism and Western christian spiritualism. It was a cocktail of baroque East and West with a right wing touch and reactionary flavor. It was plainly a paternalistic treatise with a heavy penchant for authoritarianism. The closer you sit from the top the better you control the base, reflecting accurately the pyramidal diagram of the regime. And this amalgam pot-pourri was an impressionistic, quixotic and absurd theory, too much for the rank and file to digest. I wonder how many cadres from Nhu's Can Lao Party, the official political organization of the regime, really understood the significance of his ideology.

A case in point: my father was a civil servant for Diem in the 1950's and a friend of Nhu when they met each other in France during their student's years. As all members of the regime cadres, he went through the seminars debating on the new semi-official ideology. Personalism was the ''in'' word. He usually had to go down to Vinh Long, south of Saigon the capital where Nhu had set up the HQ of his Can Lao [Workers] Party. Government officials spent days studying and dissecting the meanings of Can Lao and the Personalism new theory. My father got sick and almost died there with a heart attack[sic], as my mother told me. A priest was even summoned to his bedside. I still wonder if by any coincidence, the new philosophy had anything to do with his illness. Maybe the derisory of it almost spoiled his heart...

When he came home from these trips in the late 50's, he appeared pretty uneasy and sometimes out of the blue he asked me point blank: what is Personalism?... (nhân vị là gì?) Well, there was no easy answer for a 9 years old boy and I noticed that the rhetorical question was actually for himself. Many times the repetitive question was followed by a nervous laughter. It was vintage Daddy. Obviously he wasn't sure about the answer himself. For a thoughtful and well educated civil servant not being able to see through the opaque maze of a state ideology was very revealing. Had Nhu been witnessing the scene, he wouldn't be amused. I am convinced there were as many versions of Nhu's Personalism as there were members of his Party. Each one has his own interpretation of an all-season ideology. Personalism, with all the good efforts to promote it was a big joke.

Nhu had more arm's length weapons up his sleeves when he created the Republican Youth or Thanh Nien Cong Hoa, a paramilitary force independent from the army and police. The idea was to mobilize the young civil servants and cadres to be the arm and fist of the regime in case of need. It was designed as a counter force of more than a million members strong to call upon it when the regime will be looking for support. The members' uniform was in khaki blue. Nhu avoided the black or brown color for fear of being identified with other infamous organizations of the past, i.e the Mussolini and Hitler Youths. The black pyjamas of uncle Ho was of course out of question. Instead he chose the dark blue color, inspiring from the ultra rightist Camisas Azules of Spain under generalissimo Francisco Franco, another ardent catholic like his brother Diem.

It was more than mere coincidence for Nhu that Franco prevailed during the Spanish civil war using the army and militias to crush the communists and leftists. Diem and Nhu looked upon Franco's paramilitary as a good model to emulate, even imitating their extended hand salute. And they copied Franco in more than one way. For Nhu, in case Personalism might not succeed as a counter weapon to Marxism, a good substitute would be plain Catholicism to win the hearts and minds against Ho's atheism.

Nhu also relied on the Can Lao Party, the secretive political apparatus within the civilian bureaucracy as well as inside the military to set up a vast intelligence network of political cadres and spies to control and influence all levels of the administration. Dr. Tran Kim Tuyen was the leader of this umbrella organization under the benign name of Office of Social and Political Studies. As head of this secret police organization, Tuyen himself an ex-seminary student, was the most feared person of the regime. He commanded not only the Can Lao but the Military Security and the CIA-financed Special Forces. All in all, a vast clandestine intelligence powerhouse. With the money coming from the opium trade through Laos, and the cooperation of the VN Air Force as the transport auxiliary, Tuyen was able to finance his secret and parallel organization by recruiting agents to have surveillance on every important figure of the country. Through this elaborate cobweb system, the Diem-Nhu duo effectively controlled the political face in South VN.

After the 1954 Geneva Accord, the US was feverishly preparing covert operations to sabotage the North under Ho Chi Minh. Dr. Tuyen was in charge of Diem's foreign intelligence work and the main route to the North came through Laos. VN undercover operations were primarily directed at the North with CIA sponsorship under colonel Lansdale's hand. And to the dismay of US intelligence operators on the field, the VN agents after extensive training under the CIA and col. Le Quang Tung Special Forces supervision, were working not for intelligence gatherings but mainly to smuggle opium and gold into South VN. After purchasing gold or opium, Tuyen's agents had it delivered to airports in Southern Laos near Savannakhet or Pakse. There it was picked up and flown to Saigon by VN Air Force transports under Lt. Col Nguyen Cao Ky, whose official assignment was to shuttling Tuyen's espionage agents back and forth from Laos.

It was during one of those flights that my cousin Lt. Le Chi Nguyen was killed when his C-33 crashed into the mountains of Laos. And the facts that led me to that conclusion were quite revealing. In 1958, our family were being told by the VN military officials that he was forced to land in Hai Phong or somewhere in the North during a ''black flight'' and was held prisoner. The South VN authorities never admitted the illegal smuggling operations they were pursuing at the time. They tried to convey to his wife that he was still alive. And that he would be liberated soon! Years later, after the Tet offensive we finally discovered the truth thanks to colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan the Saigon mayor and Gen. Cao Ky's right hand man. He infamously shot point blank a Viet Cong in the streets of the capital, under the world's view. Being treated for a wounded leg and convalescing, he told my sister that my cousin's plane crashed in Laos...

In essence, the clandestine activities against the North were just a cover for mounting a large scale operation to smuggle drugs and gold in order to finance the Diem regime in its intelligence and repressive actions. Diem and Nhu, after having got rid of the Binh Xuyen gangs had reverted to the same old formula of corruption and vice business to wage another chapter of the insipid war. The French went through it in 1947 when they allied themselves with Bay Vien to fight the Viet Minh. Diem and Nhu fell into the same trap, as other subsequent South VN regimes. The colorful Ng Cao Ky already had a dubious fame when Diem referred him as ''that cowboy'', a VN qualification reserved only the most undescrible of Cholon gangsters.

Up to then, nothing seemed to suggest that the war was aimed against the Communists in a concrete way. The regime by any objective measure mobilized its efforts to fight and to subdue its own internal opponents. Fancy ideology and bogus political party wouldn't be enough to overcome the mighty and well disciplined military machine from the North. But Nhu, as usual came up with another idea, the strategic hamlets. It was to be his ''cheval de bataille'' against uncle Ho's subversive legions and cadres in the South. Nhu was really up to this task and personally took charge of the program. It was as he termed it his ''raison d'être''.

The concept was simple enough. The enemy had to be isolated from the villagers all around the countryside by erecting defensible hamlet behind barber wired and mined barriers to mobilize the population, under paramilitary protection. And if need be, the main defense army units will come to the rescue of the ''strategically'' located positions. The local defense militia forces would play the proactive role in preserving security and protection for daily life of the hamlet. And the regular army units would be freed to mount tactical sweeps to strike enemy positions as the see fit without being bogged down in wasteful, ineffective and indefensible static positions all over the country.

The US eagerly endorsed this action or may have even initiated the idea under col. Lansdale tutorship. It was the first serious step to root out communist influence from rural areas. The hitch was that VN traditions forbade villagers from being uprooted from their ancestors' birthplace and move them away into some ''concentration camps'', as the opponents to the program saw it. Yet it was another frustrating setback to a well intention enterprise. And the outcome of such an effort by Nhu didn't bear the fruit he had expected. On a practical level, isolated hamlets were at the mercy of attacks and were easily subverted by the communist cadres. They became a kind of ''Trojan horses'' whereas during the day they were friendly and at night time they came under communist control.

Despite all the bad press the situation in South VN was relatively calm in the early years of the regime. Ho Chi Minh still had some homework to do in the North with problems of his own, recovering, pacifying and rebuilding from the exhausting struggle against the French. Infiltration into the South was a trickle and most of the communist infrastructure derived from stay behind southerner cadres who became active again after the Geneva Accord was negated by Diem. South VN was under tight control by Diem with no great damage instigated by the North. Had Diem and Nhu built upon their successes against the factions of Binh Xuyen and alike, capitalizing on the tenuous support of the mass and its ready goodwill, they would get an unequal opportunity to rally the different political factions to unite and consolidate South VN to prepare for the ensuing battle against the North.

To the dismay of most observers, the political landscape just worsened with attempted coups and increasing dissatisfaction from the population. Diem and Nhu didn't pay much attention to the opposition's grievances. They had only contempt for intellectuals, politicians and even for their American allies; they paid lip service to their advice for reform and reaching out to the different opposition groups. The regime didn't see the necessity for change and reconciliation when everything seemed to be under control, so it believed. And according to Diem, the Americans never understood the real meaning of his fight against the communists. That's the crux of the problem, between him and his American officials. The relationship among the two allies was never been properly consummated and the result created lasting consequence to the war effort.

Diem knew from the outset that US support for his regime was just a brick in the containment policy wall of Foster Dulles and the Cold Warriors in Washington. He was their instrument, small but not insignificant. And Diem knew it. It was a partnership of convenience with both sides making the best out of the situation. It was a purely coincidental that Diem stumbled on the Americans, out of necessity, not of affinity. The dynamics of their relations were complex but Diem and his brother Nhu could not keep up with US demands for political change and reform. For Diem, they are abstract ideas and wishful thinking, using un-adaptable and far-flung standards to measure VN conditions. In short, the Americans didn't time to spare, they wanted immediate results for their investment which weren't forthcoming. They had to deal with the public opinion at home, their critical press and their own politicians.

Diem kept his cool on the outside but he was fuming at the American ignorance and naivete. He thought he understood a little better about VN history and its people than the Americans. He lectured them but they didn't listen. As an US high official commented: '' Diem talked to us as a bunch of uneducated students...'' VN social deficiencies and its immobility? Well the message is: '' you can't hurry the East, so better get used to it!'' Understanding Ho's Communism and its methods? '' Too boring to hear for the Americans''. How about Personalism, the antidote? Each time Nhu preached it, the US ambassador dozed off. The Americans even have the guts to confound it with the cult of personality! That's too much for the two brothers. They must have a lot to comment about their allies when they were alone.

How long that kind of situation could last? Sooner or later the gathering steam would boil over or a spark will lit up and engulf the whole uneasy tension between the two sides. On one hand, the Americans were losing patience with a pair of lunatics. On the other hand, Diem and Nhu were just buying time by procrastination. Nothing could be done to move them forward. The time for decision was near for the US administration i.e to abandon a sinking ship or to stay with it and be dragged into unknown waters.

4. The Binh Xuyen episode and Diem's fight for survival

When Diem arrived back in Saigon to assume power, he found himself in a political no man's land. South Vietnam was in a state of real anarchy and lawlessness with no effective central government. The French maintained a semblance of military control but the trauma of Dien Bien Phu was too recent for them to effectively govern the country. Unlike the North where most of the fighting took place, between Giap's forces and the Franco-Vietnamese army which resulted in the French defeat in 1954, the South was spared of the war's damage. But Diem faced a political showdown against the various sects that would spill over into an armed confrontation with enormous consequences for his regime.

The history of the sectarian war in the South was never fully understood in my opinion. For many foreign observers, it represented a kind of exotic backdrop to the so-called ''Diem miracle'' during his early years in power, aided by his unexplained instinct for survival according to his US supporters. But the state of South VN at that moment, even before Diem's return to power, already explained many of the deficiencies the Americans encountered through their frustrating and unhappy efforts to salvage his regime and subsequent ones. The Americans naively were led to believe that Diem liquidation of his domestic foes was the first step in the right direction for pacifying the country of all divisive elements in the Vietnamese society. And that he could emerge as the leader of a diversified but united South against the monolithic and repressive North.

From the start of World War 2, the Japanese put heavy pressure on the French for they considered Vietnam as a strategic position in South East Asia. Their aim was to occupy Indochina, or at least force the French to deny the [rail] supply line in Haiphong used by the Americans in providing war materiel to China. They were worried that VN would become the underbelly soft spot in their overall strategy of Asian conquest: a situation dictated by military reality pure and simple. The Japanese also became interested in Vietnam by encouraging different political groups to espouse their ''co-prosperity sphere'' of cooperation. Their reasoning was that the moment was ripe for Asian nations to liberate themselves from ''white supremacy'' by supporting Japan's geopolitical leadership. They didn't entertain an all out occupation of Indochina by defeating the French. It would be too costly and they didn't have the resources to spare. Political intervention they thought was more appropriate for sooner or later the French would be ousted.

Tokyo had already banked on [prince] Cuong De who wanted to replace his cousin Bao Dai as the new monarch in VN. And many Vietnamese from the intelligentsia (including Diem) had toyed with such an idea. Bao Dai's abject failure was the reason, with his lack of authority while he forfeited his leadership to extract concessions from the French to implement real reforms in 1932 and to secure VN's road map for independence. The question for the Japanese was twofold: how to create different politico-military factions to lay the groundwork for their entry into VN, and how to use them to win over the support of the popular mass. Tokyo had already prepared the terrain since early on by allowing many nationalists to take refuge in Japan in their fight against French colonialism.

Tokyo believed the plan would be easy enough, the Vietnamese being of the same race... And Japan is not too far away physically to support her allies in case of need. The main caveat was the Communists of uncle Ho. They would never accept a Japanese fascist tutelage. And other VN nationalist groups did have misgivings towards the Co-Prosperity sphere, Ngo Dinh Diem even refused to serve under Japan occupation in 1945 as premier. One important point to stress here: much of the internal conflict between different political factions in VN had to do with their ideology and political platforms, of the way they foresaw an independent VN, free from French rule. The main contention was the call for outside help to materialize that aim.

There were those who favored working within the colonial system and gradually asking for some form of autonomy, albeit nominal independence, praying on France goodwill and political largesse. They were the traditionalists who didn't want to rock the boat while they depended on it for their private interest. On the opposite, there were the Communists, revolutionary and sanguine in believing they were the only force capable of defeating the French if others rallied under their banner. And Ho chi Minh demonstrated his genial ability to manipulate foreign powers, including having to ''go to bed'' with the French if necessary in order to achieve his goals, although he was dead set against the Chinese. With his now [in]famous remark that ''I would prefer sniffing French shit for 5 more years than eating Chinese shit for the rest of my life...''

Outside help for Ho was a tactical instrument, no more than that. And timing is the essence of his strategy. There were also the Chinese factions under the aegis of the Kuomintan with numerous labels. Mostly they derived from the first opponents to the French under different VN monarchs and for obvious reasons. They escaped French arrests by building bases in Southern China, next to VN borders. And there was the Cuong De faction, betting on Japan emergence as the new world power, but maintaining VN cultural traditions and identity. Diem at some point belonged to that group. He hadn't discovered America yet in 1940. The Japs weren't deterred by VN political idiosyncracy. They tried to win over and co-opted various sects and groups like the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao in the South where French military presence was less dominant and political effervescence was at its peak.

Since 1926, Le Van Trung a colonial civil servant founded a sect after some revelations about the '' supreme spirit'' or Cao Dai, a blend of Buddha and Christ teachings. He established a virtual religious organization copied from the Catholic church with a Caodaist pope at the helm. After his death, Cao Dai became a well organized administrative and politico-religious institution in Tay Ninh, South VN. His successor Pham Cong Tac became in 1934 the new leader with a sizable force of three hundred thousand adherents to be reckoned with by the French authorities. And more worrisome was the overt sympathy he demonstrated for the Japanese. A crackdown by the French in 1938 disbanded his forces and sent Tac into exile in Madagascar. But under Tran Quang Vinh the new leader, the Cao Dai movement had been fully sponsored by the Japanese during WW2 as a counter revolutionary force.

With the Japanese defeat, the sect shifted its alliance to the French while Pham Cong Tac returned from exile. The Cao Dai militia was expanded to 3300 troops and used with great effectiveness against the Viet Minh. Their influence spread and they held hope of becoming the dominant political force in VN while their party the VN Phuc Quoc Hoi became very active in Cochin China. The movement remained the biggest impediment to any future VN central government to take hold over its Tay Ninh province. As a French staff officer commented: '' its dialectics, as specious as those of Communism will always allow [the sect] to perform the most audacious reversals without damage. The Cao Dai have no enemies and no permanent friends. But they have permanent interests which are those of the sect."

Using a check and balance strategy, the French and the Japanese took their turn supporting the Hoa Hao, another sect in South VN. In 1939 in Chau Doc, Huynh Phu So, a Buddhist monk after some prophecies and revelations, founded the Hoa Hao, a name taken from his own birthplace. He was known as the ''Mad Monk'' for he suffered a serious illness at his early life. The French sensing his growing popularity too risky, decided to launch a preemptive strike against him. Huynh Phu So was put into a psychiatric hospital. There, he somehow managed to convert his own psychiatrist!

The Japanese with their own Buddhist-based religion realized that the Vietnamese were more loyal to their religious beliefs than to their political convictions. And they wanted to exploit that to the fullest. A protracted undercover war followed between the French Sureté and the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police to obtain the support from the various sects. Conscious that their days are numbered in South East Asia during the last years of WW2, the Japanese decided to use local auxiliary forces to fight the French. Cao Daists and Hoa Hao elements under Japanese instigation decided to trigger the final phase for independence in the South.

In 1945 Huynh Phu So was active in the formation of the ''National United Front'', a nationalist anti-French body which included the Hoa Hao, the Cao Dai, the Binh Xuyen and the Viet Minh. But after the Japanese defeat, unlike the Viet Minh under Ho chi Minh, the sects kept on fighting for their own survival in the south, in lieu of hoping for independence. They even sided with the colonialist French to come to blows with the Viet Minh whose influence became a threat to their territory. Huynh Phu So was ambushed by the Viet Minh in 1947 on his way to preach in the western provinces. His followers are still waiting for his return...

The South was a place fertile for the underworld gangs near the marshy lowlands, southeast of Cho Lon. In the 1920's and 30's, the area was infested with river pirates, bandits and assassins. Their place of refuge was called the ''Rung Sat'' or the Killers' Jungle. Intermarriage, criminal association and anti-French activities with the Chinese Triads and VN secret societies were common place. In fact, Saigon and Cho Lon (Big Market), its twin city were the cradle of organized piracy well before the French settled in, in 1884 with a full fledged administration.

Duong Van Duong or Bach Ba who made his home in Binh Xuyen, south of Cho Lon emerged as the leader of the new group later called Binh Xuyen. Under his influence entered Le Van Vien or Bay Vien (Vien the 7th), a young street hoodlum who rose through the ranks and became notorious to the French Sureté. He and his cohorts were finally captured by the French and imprisoned on the Con Son island. Ba Duong, having been stripped of his good lieutenant Vien, brokered a relationship with the Japanese secret service during the 1940's under Matsushita Mitsuhiro, a clandestine operator with an industrial cover as director of Dainan Koosi. He was in fact controlled by the Japanese Consul in Hanoi, Yoshio Minoda.

Matsushita arranged for the kempetai to free Binh Xuyen members from Con Son in 1941 making them new allies of the Japanese and enabled them to grow in organization and power. Bay Vien escaped Con Son only in 1945 and returned to Saigon where he engaged with Ba Duong and the Japanese into subversive fighting against the French police. The Binh Xuyen became the new police force by the newly established government. And in August, the Viet Minh formed an alliance with Bay Vien and Ba Duong against the French. After the French counter coup, supported by the British in September 1945, the Viet Minh withdrew leaving Bay Vien as the military commander of Saigon Cho Lon with a hundred men! He with some Japanese deserters and a 2000 strong students group called the Avant Garde Youth of Lai Van Sang engaged the French. They had to pull back to the Rung Sat but their stay behind agents went on in their campaign of terror and extortion.

Ba Duong was killed in Feb 1946 by the French, during a brief period of dispute he had with the Viet Minh. Bay Vien exploited Ba Duong's fall by secretly entering negotiations with the French Deuxieme Bureau to consolidate his hold on power of the Binh Xuyen. He realized that the French needed him to pacify the region from the Viet Minh forces and he could emerge as a respectable political force with lucrative dividends in the South, especially in the Saigon Cho Lon area. In 1954, Lai Van Sang became director-general of Police and the Binh Xuyen controlled a sixty mile strip between Saigon and Vung Tau. Thus Le Van Vien or Bay Vien the Binh Xuyen leader who controlled the vice business around the city, after some 'escarmouches' with the Viet Minh and the French in 1945, reappeared on the scene along with Bao Dai as his ally and protector in 1954! Their alliance was of mutual interest, his Majesty needing the money and material support and Bay Vien was more than willing to acquiesce.

The US even observed, referring to that episode that: ''...the Binh Xuyen was a political and racketeering club which had agreed to carry out police functions in return for a monopoly on gambling, opium traffic and prostitution''. The different sects and their warlords in the South benefited from the political and security vacuum created by the French neglect and outright [criminal] duplicity. It was a political black hole of fiefdoms and pseudo-religious sects dictating their own laws in their own turfs. And the Vietnamese in the south were an easy prey by their religious tolerance, their propensity for superstition and disinterest for national issues.

By the virtue of their own humiliating exit from the North in 1954, the French didn't care who eventually will control the South. They and the Japanese, in their war against each other and against the Communists have used the sordid elements of the VN society as proxies. In order to divide and rule as they did in the North (Tonkin), the French in particular had created a fertile ground for political anarchy and social instability that later Diem and the Americans inherited but found no way of knowing how to deal with.

The Americans were pessimistic about Diem's prospect and rightly so. They almost pulled the plug on him when they saw the whole picture in 1954. Diem was virtually on his own during those first months in Saigon. The Army was under Nguyen Van Hinh, an Air Force general under Bao Dai's strings. The police was Binh Xuyen's right arm. All the political parties snubbed Diem. His influence was limited to a few blocks around his Palace. Of course he has his brother Nhu and a few die hard supporters like Army Colonel Edward Landsdale. But Diem didn't panic. He just wanted to prove to his detractors that they were a little hasty to sell him short. And he savored the idea to prove them wrong with a kind of fanatical but serene faith in his mission, coupled with an obstinacy difficult to fathom. He was a perfect contrarian and loner and it made his success even harder to swallow for his opponents.

Backed by the legendary Landsdale who had a track record against the Communists in the Philippines, Diem proceeded by eliminating his opponents one by one, starting with the perfunctory Le Van Hinh who admittedly underestimated Diem pugnaciousness. Hinh was dismissed and ordered out of the country. Unsure of American and Bao Dai support, general Hinh didn't attempt a coup that would defeat Diem forces had he had chosen to do so. Then came the sects and Bay Vien as the next ennemy. Vien was smarting under Diem decision to cut his payroll by closing his gambling concessions. He once again allied wih the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects to fight Diem. But the rug was pulled under their feet by Diem bribing and splitting their ranks.

General Trinh Minh The, a competent and popular member of the Hoa Hao broke rank, thanks to Landsdale's money, and joined Diem. The sects were split and weakened by internal wrangling. Diem went for broke in the summer of 1955, with a mounted offensive led by colonel Duong Van Minh, who later played a key role in Diem's assassination. The fighting culminated in the death of general The and the defeat of the sects. Saigon was the scene of much carnage and destruction, but Diem finally prevailed thanks to his determination and stubbornness. For the sake of South VN's survival and of his own, Diem had demonstrated that he could be ruthless and unforgiving. Some sects leaders like Ba Cut paid for their lives under the guillotine for resisting to the end.

There was no respite and honeymoon period for his government but Diem saw the light at the end of the tunnel, after one year in office. He wanted to make a clean sweep and the time had come to ask the Vietnamese to choose between him and Bao Dai. Fresh from his victory over the sects, the elimination of the last relic of French colonialism was a foregone conclusion. By a referendum won with 98.6% of the vote, he became the first president and uncontested leader of South VN in October 1955. It was a sweeping political victory aided by preemptive groundwork and unorthodox coaching of the population before the vote. Bao Dai had no chance by his absence for he got no constituencies left in the country. And he wouldn't dare going back for fear for his own life, being condemned to death in absentia by Diem.

Against all odds, Diem had performed a miracle according to his supporters. The French, Bao Dai, the Americans, his political opponents, the Communists and even his own family had written him off. Mgsr Thuc his older brother called on him to quit during that time! He had come back from nowhere. Did he feel that his destiny was a gift from above? Did anyone would have thought differently in his place? It's time for Diem to cash in on his successes. But he was aware that a long and tortuous road lied ahead with many greater challenges that will have to be met head on. Ho Chi Minh and his troops in the North were ready for him.

3. Ngo Dinh Diem and his family

Diem was born at the outset of the 20th century, in 1901 in Hué, Central Vietnam. His aristocratic family had a well known past, serving at the royal court as far back as the 17th century. The Ngos was one of the earliest Vietnamese Christians baptized by the French during their first religious mission in the Indochina peninsula. And many members of Diem ancestors were martyrs for their faith.

His father Ngo Dinh Kha was a member of emperor Thanh Thai court (who reigned from 1889 to 1907), as Grand Chamberlain and Minister of Rites, the equivalent of Chief of staff and Secretary of State. The Ngo family became somewhat disturbed by the French when they conspired to depose Thanh Thai in 1907 citing that he was becoming insane (i.e anti-French). And Ngo Dinh Kha just kept hammering to his children about the French betrayal. The family's deep seated suspicion and prejudice towards the French might already be explained then.

Of the nine children, Thuc, Diem and Khoi were the most prominent and successful. Thuc was also born in Hue, in 1897. Unlike most of his brothers who pursued politics, Thuc pursued priesthood and later became the archbishop of Hue in 1960. By a twist of coincidence, his role during the war will be paramount as religion became an instrument of the state with tragic consequence. He also created quite a stir in the Catholic church during the last years of his life by becoming involved with the traditionalist movement of the Church and joined Mgr Lefebvre to ordain his own bishops in spite of the Vatican displeasure. He was even excommunicated by Rome in 1976 but obtained absolution from Paul VI with his repenting. He died in Carthage, Missouri in 1984.

Ngo Dinh Khoi, the eldest had a shorter life than most of his brothers when he was buried alive along with his son by the communists during the purge of the nationalists in the 1940's. He was also a mandarin and provincial official when he was caught by the Viet Minh who thought he was going to get them first! With all the tragedies he had witnessed, Diem got more personal experiences than he had hoped for and it explained the man behind the mask. He was undoubtedly the main character of the family (along with Nhu his youngest brother).

We cannot escape talking about the man, his personality and his thoughts to fully comprehend that period of Vietnam's history. One of the incongruous and revealing face of Vietnam pertains to Diem's strengths and weaknesses. Oddly, the very qualities he possessed were anathema in his own country and his defects just mirrored the kind of society he ruled. In a sense he reflected all the shortcomings of his own lot without commanding much respect from his compatriots. Diem's virtues of morality and honesty along with his religious devotion and physical chastity never inspired the masses.

He was called chi si Ngo which could mean many things...but succinctly it meant for his sympathizers as Ngo the man of spirit. If he had to stick a name to make his own description, that would be it. And as a very cultured person, he chose his words carefully. Chi si could be translated also as the man of morality. The ambiguity and nuance suited him perfectly well because he's not unaware of his countrymen indulgence and condoning for less than moral social behavior. In fact he should be dubbed ''moralissimo Diem''.

Diem was the perfect product of the mandarin system perpetuated by the French, enabling Vietnam with the new elite to rule the country. The French knew that sooner or later, Vietnam had to be governed by Vietnamese. They constituted the Learning Academies (Quoc Hoc) for the ''best and brightest'' where Diem went to study before being promoted as a provincial governor in 1929 in Cochin China. He was a brilliant student, a hard working and very competent civil servant with a meteoric rise. In 1932, at 31 he became Minister of Interior under the Bao Dai cabinet. The young emperor also raised much hope, being the first modern Vietnamese monarch to study and nurtured in France with enlightened ideas and fresh demeanor. And he relied heavily on new prospects like Diem to thrust Vietnam into modernity and pressing the pace toward national independence.

Diem found right from the beginning that working under French rule was impossible for a true nationalist. In his humorless way he told Bao Dai that he's fed up wit all the masquerade and resigned only a few months after being sworn in. He had to put up with too much sniping and resistance from the more traditionalists and pro-French elements who felt threatened by the intended reforms set out by Bao Dai's government. In a pace of less than one year, Bao Dai's hope of national revival became a bitter disappointment for the nationalists and for Diem. Disenchanted he left public life and isolated himself from the struggle that ensued between Ho Chi Minh's communists and the other nationalists.

Unlike many politicians, Diem was rather shy and a loner. Although not exactly an introvert like his younger brother Nhu who's more of a philosophical thinker, Diem had a mystical belief in himself and thought to possess a messianic mission to save his country. '' The time will come when the nation needs me'', he said to himself. And he was very prescient in his analysis of the political situation. But he kept things under wrap for himself during those lean years (''traversée du désert''). When the events occurred as he had predicted, namely the purge of the nationalists by Ho chi Minh and his communist cadres, and the crumbling of the colonial regime, he became more and more convinced of his indispensable position vis-a-vis Bao Dai, the French and the Americans.

Diem believed in 1954 that he had been '' mandated by Heaven'' to save South Vietnam from communism and colonialism. As a man of moral principles and deep [religious] conviction, he believed he has the answer to the nation's problems. And the number one priority was to fight the spread of communism. If Vietnamese from all classes and political orientations were united against colonialism, if they didn't waver and stood firm like he did, there would be no need to accommodate the communists. He was very critical of the various political factions that competed against each other. They were for him politicians of the worst kind, petty, vain and easy to be bought. They were the cause of Vietnam misery and the proliferation of communism by their incessant bickering and they lost sight of their common enemies led by Ho chi Minh.

On a personal level, Diem character was even more complex and intriguing. Those who had the opportunity to deal with him couldn't believe how he managed to run the affairs of the state with so many idiotic habits. He could talk non stop for hours and meetings dragged on and on with no end in sight. Meetings with [foreign] officials were in reality monologues. He spoke and people just had to listen. So much for personal openness... And he had so many things to say that by the time the guest is gone, he ended up talking to himself! One of the American official who dealt with him even said that Diem had a psychiatric problem with his compulsive mouth.

Diem's anomaly may have a better explanation. He felt genuinely that he was not understood by people. He had many things interesting to tell and nobody seemed to care. Diem was a lonely man indeed as we could imagine from the expression of his ever sad smile. Moreover he had a justifiably good reason for his religious fervor. When you cannot trust and relate to people down on earth, you better rely in God to make some sense out of your own existence. To me Diem was a truly pathetic figure, difficult to love but impossible to hate.

His idiosyncratic manners wouldn't prove fatal had he not possessed other traits that made his destiny worth of a character from Kafka's or Dostoevsky's. Diem was a vulnerable man while he depended entirely on his family, especially on Ngo Dinh Nhu his younger brother, who was dubbed in some circles as his 'other half''. It's difficult to dislike and blame Diem for he genuinely cared about people and showed such tolerance and loyalty toward his siblings namely Nhu. Having no children of his own (he had taken a vow of chastity), he was very indulgent to his family and to his sister-in-law, the famous Mme Nhu or Tran Le Xuan.

Mme Nhu detained a power that was incommensurate with her position while Diem turned a blind eye to her eccentric behavior due in part to the fact that she bore two sons to the Ngo family. They were the only surviving male descendants, the other nephew being murdered by the Viet Minh along with his father Khoi. According to Vietnamese traditions, a family without male inheritors is a big sin towards the ancestors. Consequently he endured her as well as Mgr Thuc extravagant outbursts because Thuc was the elder brother, Khoi the eldest being liquidated by the Communists. So much for family values and politics, Vietnam style!

Diem drawbacks typically reflect the power of family bonds which still exist in Vietnam, particularly in the central region whereas family members have first and foremost to preserve the family name and interests. It is the first virtue to adhere, phúc nghĩa or loyalty and sacrifice. Diem and his closest family members just depended on one and another for counsel and decision he had to make. Autocracy by family rule was the form of administration. His motto must be: '' in our family we trust, in everybody else we check''.

Diem was very neurotic of potential contenders who vied to compete against him. He was suspicious about everybody outside of his family. And his isolation just got deeper until the day fatality struck. The regime that he personified had planted its own seeds of destruction right from the beginning. He should have known it better for he was an astute and incisive observer of other people's fallibility. One of his tragic mistakes was his blindness of confusing his family interest with the national interest. Although to be fair, such an idiotic behavior is still prevalent in nations where there is a critical shortage of competent manpower to fill the key government positions.

Diem and his cohorts otherwise had some more bizarre inclinations. For the Americans it must have been nerve-wracking to deal with the Asians and their moral intricacies even if they found them as a fascinating cultural challenge. Like most Vietnamese, Diem tried to avoid direct confrontation and personal conflict. When he had to deal with his American officials he seldom said no. And he said yes when he really didn't mean it! Bob McNamara the quantitative expert might have found him and Nhu inscrutable and problematic to decode. As a French China expert put it, '' the Orientals don't like the straight line ''

Diem also lived in a self-delusive world where no news are better than bad news. By far the most interesting cultural riddle in the East pertains to the search for truth. Orientals as I said before detest bad news and are more than willing to resort to censorship to placate things, as if nothing bad happened. Diem I am convinced never heard the whole story about his regime while in power. His acolytes wouldn't allow him to hear any news which didn't suit him or his entourage. By any definition, Diem didn't possess the slightest idea about the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam and how the masses thought about his government. If he knew, he hid it well or he practiced the worst form of self-denial. And when the bad news sipped through, it was too late.

2. Dien Bien Phu and its aftermath

In May of 1954 the French surrendered at Dien Bien Phu after being overrun by superior Viet Minh forces in fierce combat. The military consequence would be less significant for France had it not been for the lassitude of a long and costly war with no end in sight. French weary political leaders were pressuring the government at home to settle for a negotiated end to the conflict. The following July, the Geneva Agreement was concluded with the partition of Vietnam into 2 military zones, at the 17th parallel. The North will be under Ho Chi Minh rule and the South under France's trusteeship for a two-year period, until general elections could take place...

In the meantime Bao Dai and the government of prince Buu Loc his cousin, bitterly opposed the Accord. The emperor was known to be easily influenced by the French during the whole episode prior to 1954. It struck me that his [puppet] regime has decided to dissent at this later stage. The only reasonable explanation is that he wanted to distance himself from the French protective umbrella and bet on the Americans who recognized his government since 1950. The French didn't make a fuss out of it and were puzzled by Bao Dai's about face. Maybe there's a sign of his long delayed resurgence and last ditch effort for redemption.

Unable to sway the French in Geneva, his cabinet resigned and Bao Dai has to find a true 'nationalist', a credible and strong political figure to salvage the situation and avoid a permanent partition of the country. He put his cards on Ngo Dinh Diem, a diminutive 5'3'' ex mandarin to become the new premier of South Vietnam. The French have no objection on the choice. Bao Dai would have had a hard time finding someone for the job, for the odds of succeeding were slim indeed. The dice was cast: the French have overlooked Bao Dai's and the Vietnamese interests. They conceded to Uncle Ho's demands and accepted a de facto communist regime in the north. Their demoralized troops were gradually disengaging from the north. Diem facing a fait accompli steadfastly refused to sign the Agreement and the Americans followed suit by just witnessing it in Geneva.

Washington had an ambivalent and reluctant approach to Vietnam and the Geneva accord. On one hand the US under Eisenhower and Foster Dulles didn't want a communist takeover in the north, but on the other hand they couldn't support any longer a French colonial regime in South East Asia. The US did acquiesce to the French returning after the Japanese surrender in 1945 for reasons that had more to do with France's internal politics. And due to her costly victory over Nazi Germany, France should be in a position to reclaim its colony and rightly so, after being humiliated by the Japanese takeover just before the cessation of hostilities in WW2.

Washington feared that a communist victory in Indochina would tilt the balance of power to the Communist party in the French National Assembly! And nine years after, the situation just kept sliding downward from bad to worse, and the French troops suffered their final blow at Dien Bien Phu. It was time for the US government to let go. With its hard learned lesson in Korea, America has no mood for intervention. Without a political solution, the best possible outcome for Indochina would be a military stalemate. Moreover, the Americans realized that Bao Dai was a liability rather than a solution. In fact he never took his role seriously since his abdication in 1945. Becoming a nominal head of state, he preferred gambling,  hunting or having a luxurious life in France and calling the shots thousands of miles away.

Diem was not really the best bet for the Americans in this political void. They have doubts about his popular base and his political instinct, being in self exile since 1945. They considered him a passive man and a quitter. After a few disappointed runs with power, Diem had decided to withdraw from politics and went into religious hiding as a seminarian in New York in 1950. But in the US he has a powerful ally and friend by the name of Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Vicar General for the US army, who found in Diem the right stuff to lead Vietnam. And the Cardinal reasoning could be summarized in two words: catholic and anti-communist. Diem was more than that, he was an ardent nationalist, an anti-colonialist and by ricochet an anti-collaborator (i.e anti-Bao Dai). Diem the politician was better judged for his negatives than for his qualities. But two negatives putting together became a plus according to US calculations. It seized the opportunity to eventually get rid of Bao Dai and the French in Vietnam by endorsing Diem.

In 1950 Diem was introduced to cardinal Spellman through the good offices of his brother Thuc, a bishop who happened to be in the US at that time. Diem impressed the Cardinal as a fierce anti-communist and a devout catholic with personal honesty and integrity. He also caught the eye of some US government circles. A few arranged meetings between the two brothers and State Department officials including Dean Rusk convinced the Americans to overcome their initial reservations about their man as the next leader of Vietnam. With the backing of his Eminence and the blessings of the Vatican for Diem, Bao Dai might have got some clues from the US when he decided to change the course of his country and his own!

Bao Dai was lukewarm about Diem but he had no choice. The two could not be more different in personality and character. Bao Dai knew that he is dealing with a difficult man, not easy to please. He also sensed that his new appointee has some kind of superior [moral] complex! As a leader, his Majesty did have blatant shortcomings but he was no fool. Diem didn't hold him in high esteem but the emperor had to be forgiving and swallowed hard his ego for the sake of the country. Diem didn't seem to be interested in the proposal at first. And it created a double dilemma for Bao Dai who felt already uncomfortable by appointing an egocentric person, on top of the fact that there was no alternative available if Diem failed to accept the offer. 

Diem genuinely was considering to devote his life to religion according to Bao Dai during their 1954 fateful meeting in Cannes. And His Majesty had to use all his persuasive talent and appealed to Diem's patriotism to convince him to undertake the mission. Diem finally accepted but not without raising the stake. He demanded from Bao Dai full power to deal with the French and the communists. As his brother Thuc the bishop said, Diem was waiting for that moment and he knew that his time has come to rule Vietnam and put his own imprint into the future of his country for better or for worse. Bao Dai probably sensed that his fate is sealed or he just made an act of self destruction.

1. Introduction

I have decided not long ago to write about the Vietnam conflict. For that I gathered quite an amount of books written by people with direct experience and good knowledge about my country and its history. I went through them and learned considerably. I wanted to find out the truth and how my view and opinion fared against what was written about the subject. Either way I hope to have something new and interesting to say while recalling for the reader the historical events from my own perspective.

The Vietnamese were the big losers of the war. My writing is merely a testimony to that, i.e about their courage and untold sacrifice. Those indelible wounds permeate their psyche. My people should have deserved a better outcome. Their unfulfilled aspirations and current plight is the mother lesson that fratricidal armed conflict is no answer to our internal grievances. And inserting ideology or religion as a subterfuge to further one's cause in the conflict didn't help but exacerbate the tensions and hatred between the two opposite camps. The Vietnamese have a long memory and hopefully will   remember from this tragic experience.

I realize now the extent of the work I pursued and always asked myself whether I would be up to the challenge. I was constantly faced with balancing judgment acts. With an issue as contentious as the war, the first casualty is the neutrality and fair mindedness to all sides in the conflict. When passion takes over sound judgment especially in such a divisive issue, the message put forward is biased, forfeiting credibility and thus becoming worthless. We've all experienced misfortune, big or small that leave marks in our psyche. And bearing a loss of someone or something dear, you take a beating and becoming emotionally afflicted. It's hard to stay above the fray and pretend that you'll remain objective.

The Vietnamese had to endure that collective nightmare transcending many generations. They have a pathological reaction to align for or against something. There were the pro and anti-French colonialist. The anti-French were subdivided between the pro and anti-communist. Then there were the pro and anti-Diem and later the pro and anti-American... This Balkanization into an infinite number of political factions in Vietnam gives students of VN history a sense of  bewilderment. And this political fragmentation and social divide have had lasting and untold repercussion.

The second difficulty is to differentiate fact from fiction. And it doesn't sound that simple. I have experienced some of the past events, for the rest I relied on witness accounts and material from the books I read, especially for the period prior to 1950 on the simple fact that I wasn't born then. That's one of the reason I will start with the Diem era. Vietnam recent history is well written, especially with the beginning of US involvement for Ngo Dinh Diem and his regime. And I have some vivid anecdotes to tell.

Many historical facts seemed to be at borderline with fiction and the reason is symptomatic of the way the Vietnamese coexist with information. They have a knack for rumors combined with a high propensity for gossip. The political leaders are very adept at capitalizing on that popular weakness and wouldn't miss any opportunity to mislead their people. Propaganda or the manufacturing and marketing of information, is an effective WMD. During the conflict, truth and falsehood thus have become hardly distinguishable, like the two similar sides of the same coin.

Fictitious news that have not been discarded will get a life of their own . They became accepted factual events and even outlasted other historical news throughout the conflict. To give an example, the Diem regime spread the rumor that the US were behind the 1963 Buddhist crisis in order to discredit the South Vietnamese regime, thus undermining its popularity and preparing for its downfall. On that Diem and his subordinates did succeed to sow confusion and nowadays the sense is still prevailing that it was an actual fact. We know something about 'conspiracy theories' these days.

Normal decency would require that we adhere to honesty and truth. I make no exception to that. My goal is to answer to the What, How and Why of all the fateful events that have occurred. But even in the best of circumstances, truth can wear many faces, like a mirror from which one sees reality through different angles. Truth is in the eyes of the beholder, it can be twisted and deformed. If objectivity is a standard, the search for [an illusory] truth should be foremost in our mind and it's a huge challenge indeed.

The last difficulty has to do with the scope of my writing project. The more I focus on a specific matter, the more I need to go further and consequently have to expand the subject studied. Vietnam history, even if it has occurred over 2000 years, is a succession of interrelated calamities especially in the last 2 centuries. Like an unending movie sequel, one cannot understand the American War period without looking into the first Indochina War. And one cannot comprehend the Diem period without looking at the French colonial period and the subsequent Communist take over with Ho Chi Minh.

I am no historian but I stick to the old adage that'' history just repeats itself''. It sounds so true when I look back at all the tragedies that just kept repeating throughout our unfortunate collective existence. To fully evaluate the situation in its context, the reader must be ready to digest centuries of upheaval, which should have been illuminating for the decision makers in Paris, Washington or elsewhere had they have known better about our intricate history.

How will I tackle the problem? I have decided to use a Vietnamese expediency to solve it. The Vietnamese love the number 9. By the way I got into a discussion with a former South Vietnamese official who was a refugee in California back in 1975. He lamented about his bad fate and the South's debacle. I reminded him that VN had many chances to be saved from both colonialism and communism and the opportunity came up every 9 years, starting in 1945.

With the end of World War 2 in 19[45] and the emergence of Ho Chi Minh a charismatic national leader, Vietnam saw a formidable grass root political force fighting against the weary French. Then 19[54], with the Diem phenomenon who erected the new bastion against uncle Ho and Communism financed by the Americans, a line was being drawn at the 17th parallel dividing the 2 Vietnam. In 19[63], the tragic death of Diem and the rule of the military junta still opened a new window to keep up the fight against the North with massive US intervention. And finally 19[72], the Communist general offensive against the South and the Paris Accord to be signed gave South Vietnam a further 'decent interval' and an ultimate chance for survival.

How many missed chances and unfulfilled opportunities do we have! Each time I gave a date, he just stared at me and said: 'Right, it's true! '' as if 9 could could have been his salvation number. Getting back to reality, he resigned himself to the idea that no amount of faith would make a dent into Vietnam's distress for the last half of the 20th century. The Good Spirits have let his country down, believe it or not, to his big sorrow. Unfortunately superstition doesn't seem to help in time of desperation.

Truth is taboo, untouchable and almost a dirty word in the Vietnamese culture. [Religious] faith although widely practiced in VN is a question mark and for me an unreliable asset for a nation. Then ideology became a fertile ground for some new desperate experiments in Vietnam no doubt during that period. The Diem period is a good starting point to tell and we can go backward or forward from there. Many questions ought to be answered during that chaotic period. An autopsy of that missed opportunity should be performed and it could be seen as an indictment of a corrosive regime, inept and incapable to changes under the most critical time of VN history.