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.