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.