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  1. #1
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by stanleywinthrop View Post
    Again your line of reasoning is confusing to me. Are you saying that while Pham was a communist agent he acted "more Catholic than the Pope" to avoid suspicion, and this necessarily included not spreading communist propaganda and disinformation to the press? What was his purpose as a communist agent, to back up Diem's claims that he was winning the war?
    If you stop to think about it from a classic subversion standpoint, it would make perfect sense for Pham to back the claims of the Diem regime. Why? Because then fewer people would look at what was really going on in the countryside and VCI activity could continue unchecked.

    It's also worth noting that the majority of the ethnic Vietnamese population of SVN was in the Mekong Delta region (generally speaking...although both III and IV CTZs were densely populated compared to the rest of the country) so an examination of Diem's popularity in that region is perfectly justified. The relevance of the central government at the village level in Vietnam during this period is still the subject of some debate, but one thing that isn't debated is that Diem was not especially popular at that level (this shows up both in recent research and contemporary studies...some of which came out before the coup). Still, as Ken points out (and I'll paraphrase) "he may have been a bastard, but he was their bastard." Diem had precious little in common with the common folk of SVN, but they at least understood his brand of corruption. Could we have "won" with him? Doubtful.
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

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    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
    Could we have "won" with him? Doubtful.
    But we clearly did not "win" without him, which is one of Moyar's main themes, and one of the main reasons for history, to ponder such questions.

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    Quote Originally Posted by stanleywinthrop View Post
    But we clearly did not "win" without him, which is one of Moyar's main themes, and one of the main reasons for history, to ponder such questions.
    Sure, but I don't think there's as much to ponder as Moyar seems to think. Diem was a part of the equation, but the GVN was also sinking quickly with him. There is no reason to suspect, based on both his performance and that of the people around him, that he could have "pulled the rabbit out of the hat" and salvaged SVN.
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

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    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
    Sure, but I don't think there's as much to ponder as Moyar seems to think. Diem was a part of the equation, but the GVN was also sinking quickly with him. There is no reason to suspect, based on both his performance and that of the people around him, that he could have "pulled the rabbit out of the hat" and salvaged SVN.
    I don't think Moyar is claiming that Diem could have "pulled the rabbit out of the hat" and won the war quicly and easily. He is arguing that Diem represented the best chance of pacifiying south vietnam without direct U.S. intervention, and the natural U.S. focus on true democracy absolute human rights got in the way of our stated overall goal--to win the war.
    Last edited by stanleywinthrop; 10-04-2007 at 05:01 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by stanleywinthrop View Post
    I don't think Moyar is claiming that Diem could have "pulled the rabbit out of the hat" and won the war quicly and easily. He is arguing that Diem represented the best chance of pacifiying south vietnam without direct U.S. intervention, and the natural U.S. focus on true democracy absolute human rights got in the way of our stated overall goal--to win the war.
    Well...we will certainly have to agree to disagree here.
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

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