06-06-2016, 04:27 PM
(06-06-2016, 02:43 PM)Anthony Wrote: This was a lie, concocted out of whole cloth by the Communists to make the Saigon regime appear "bigoted" - and it fits in perfectly with the Viet Cong's timing of the Tet offensive (and the militantly atheistic Communists were any friends of the Buddhists, or the adherents of any religion?).
And so what if a few loyalists in South Vietnam didn't like Buddhists? A lot of American "loyalists" during World War II didn't like our entire social and economic system, because they were Communists - and in France this was even more pervasive: The Maquis were practically all Communists.
Good leaders do everything possible to make allies. Bad ones seek out large groups of people as scapegoats. The cronyism and corruption so commonplace in the Republic of Vietnam created fifth columns. The Diem gang got where it was by first kissing up to the French colonial authorities and then getting their blessing when the French could no longer hold Vietnam. These people were the sorts who almost believed that their ancestors were Celts with blue eyes and red hair. The Catholics dominating southern Vietnam until 1975 got no clue until it was too late. Even the Commies know how to play the nationalist card. They knew how to exploit Buddhist sensibilities.
Madame Nhu should have never mocked those Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest of the policies of her associates.
For a partial analogue consider Iraq. The Ba'ath fascist regime (which was far worse than the Diem regime, of course) treated the Shiites so badly that if an invader ever came they would have aligned with that invader, whether the invader was Iran, the USA, or (at one point) the Soviet Union.
... Let's take the rehashing of the Vietnam War elsewhere. This thread is about the recently deceased.
As the man that one poll determined was the greatest athlete of the 20th century (I would have picked Gordie Howe) said, no VC ever called him a (rhymes with the name of Roy Rogers' horse).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.