“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels' wives," said Frances Fitzgerald, 1972 (American journalist and author). President Kennedy's advisers Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended that US troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers. Kennedy rejected the idea but increased military assistance yet again. In April 1962, John Kenneth Galbraith (another presidential adviser) warned Kennedy of the "danger we shall replace the French as a colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did". By 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900 advisors. The Strategic Hamlet Programme had been initiated in 1961. This joint US-South Vietnamese programme attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified camps. The aim was to isolate the population from the insurgents, provide education and health care, and strengthen the government's hold over the countryside. The Strategic Hamlets, however, were quickly infiltrated by the guerrillas. The peasants resented being uprooted from their ancestral villages. The government refused to undertake land reform, which left farmers paying high rents to a few wealthy landlords. Corruption dogged the programme and intensified opposition. Government officials were targeted for assassination. The inept performance of the South Vietnamese army was exemplified by failed actions such as the Battle of Ap Bac on January 2, 1963, in which a small band of Viet Cong beat off a much larger and better equipped South Vietnamese force, many of whose officers seemed reluctant even to engage in combat. Some policymakers in Washington began to conclude that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists and might even make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. He seemed concerned only with fending off coups. As Senator Robert F. Kennedy noted, "Diem wouldn't make even the slightest concessions. He was difficult to reason with..." By 1963, general conditions deteriorated in South Vietnam, and with discontent with Diem's policies exploding following a series of political, military, economic social and religious blunders that sparked off mass protests. US officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change. The US Department of State was generally in favour of encouraging a coup. The CIA was in contact with generals planning to remove Diem. They were told that the US would not oppose such a move nor punish the generals by cutting off aid. President Diem was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on November 2, 1963. Following the coup, chaos ensued. Hanoi took advantage of the situation and increased its support for the guerrillas. South Vietnam entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military government toppled another in quick succession. US military advisers were embedded at every level of the South Vietnamese armed forces. They were, however, almost completely ignorant of the political nature of the insurgency which was actually a political power struggle, in which military engagements were not the main goal. The Kennedy administration sought to refocus US efforts on pacification and "winning over the hearts and minds" of the population. The military leadership in Washington, however, was hostile to any role for US advisers other than conventional troop training. General Paul Harkins, commander of US forces in South Vietnam, confidently predicted victory by Christmas 1963. The CIA was less optimistic, however, warning that "the Viet Cong by and large retain de facto control of much of the countryside and have steadily increased the overall intensity of the effort". Paramilitary officers from the CIA's Special Activities Division trained and led Hmoung tribesmen in Laos and into Vietnam. The indigenous forces numbered in tens of thousands and they conducted direct action missions, led by paramilitary officers, against the Communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese supporters. The CIA also ran the Phoenix Programme and participated in SOG (Studies and Observations Group), which was originally named the Special Operations Group, but was changed for cover purposes. Dear Egyptian Mail readers, your contributions to and/or comments on articles published in this corner are welcome. We promise to publish whatever is deemed publishable at the end of this series. [email protected]
