Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda From the Philippines to Iraq by Brewer Susan A

Author:Brewer, Susan A. [Brewer, Susan A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 20th Century, International Relations, Propaganda, General, ISBN-13: 9780195381351, Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies), USA, 19th Century, Nationalism & Patriotism, Military, Oxford University Press, united states, 21st Century, Political Ideologies, History, Modern, Political Science, History & Theory
ISBN: 9780199753963
Google: YlkWDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-03-17T08:42:24+00:00

why

vietnam

185

President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles greet South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, Washington, 1957. (National Archives, 342-AF-18302AF)

By the time Senator Kennedy became president, Diem’s unpopular regime was in serious trouble. Diem’s repressive policies helped to recruit communists and noncommunists into the National Liberation Front (NLF), the successor of the revolutionary Vietminh, which used guerrilla operations and political agitation to attack the Saigon government. The South Vietnamese and U.S.

governments called the insurgents of the NLF, communist or not, “Vietcong”

or Vietnamese communists. American offi cials asserted that Hanoi controlled the Vietcong, while critics argued that the NLF was made up of southerners engaged in a civil war against a hated government. Both were right. Hanoi sent soldiers and supplies south along the hidden Ho Chi Minh trail running through neighboring Laos and Cambodia, while encouraging communists in the NLF to promote the goal of national unity. Yet, the critics were correct in pointing out that peasants, students, and religious leaders, as well as communists, opposed Diem who had outlawed Buddhist observances in a country where 80 percent of the people practiced Buddhism. The U.S. government

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why america fights

urged Diem to expand civil liberties, allow village elections, and extend loans to small farmers. Diem did the opposite, cracking down on the press and arresting dissenting politicians. Reluctantly, Washington stuck by Diem, who was, in the words of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, “the only boy we got out there.”14

To respond to the Vietcong, the United States shifted its policy from providing aid and training to engaging in offensive operations. It launched

“Operation Beefup,” which doubled U.S. military assistance and set up the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). As Army offi cers went on combat missions with the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN for Army of the Republic of Vietnam) and Marines and Air Force helicopter pilots delivered troops to combat zones, the effectiveness of the South Vietnamese military soared temporarily until the Vietcong adapted. It seemed that as soon as ARVN troops returned from missions, the Vietcong would reclaim control over the countryside. Moreover, ARVN troops could not tell who was a communist guerrilla and who was a civilian peasant. Suffering heavy losses, they bombed villages, dropped U.S.-supplied napalm and defoliants, and shot people indiscriminately, thereby making it easier for the NLF to recruit support against the Saigon government. The Americans and the South Vietnamese implemented the Strategic Hamlet program. Its purpose was to relocate peasants in fortifi ed hamlets, thereby separating the guerrillas from the Vietnamese people who supported them, whether willingly or unwillingly. Planners envisioned all sorts of political and land reforms taking place in the hamlets, even as they uprooted peasants from the sacred land of their ancestors. 15

In Washington, the Kennedy administration skillfully practiced news management, using live press conferences at which the quick-witted president excelled. JFK explained that there were many problems in Vietnam but held to the Domino Theory. In September 1963 he signaled a move away from the Diem regime by pointing out that while it had been in power for ten years, civil unrest continued.

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