In 1963, South Vietnam was ruled by President Ngo Dinh Diem, and at the time American military and intelligence advisers were strongly critical of him for not waging the fight against the enemy aggressively enough. (Sound familiar?) So, when the CIA folks in Saigon heard that some Vietnamese generals were hatching a coup, the American ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, gave these generals the green light, assuring them that if they succeeded, the U.S. would promptly recognize their new regime. Thus encouraged, the generals decided to “carpe Diem” on November 1. The next day, President Diem and his brother were both killed by the generals, and the new government was indeed swiftly recognized by the United States. The initial cover story was that Diem and his brother both committed suicide, but then photographs surfaced showing their stabbed and bullet-riddled bodies, hands tied, in the back of a truck. Oops. (Today, the murders would probably be shown on YouTube.)
Exactly three weeks later, the President who okayed the Saigon coup would himself be assassinated, in Dallas.
Fast forward to last week. President Bush, asked by a reporter whether it was time to replace Prime Minister Maliki, answered that this was a question for the Iraqis, not the U.S. Of course, Diem was killed by the Vietnamese, not the Americans. If something unfortunate happens to Maliki, the Americans in Baghdad are sure to have clean hands.
But Maliki knows the score, just as Pakistan’s President Musharraf knows the score. He says that the Americans threatened to bomb his country “back to the stone age” if he did not sign on as a U.S. ally. Now he, no less than Maliki, is feeling the heat, as U.S. politicians accuse him of not pursuing Al Qaeda on his border with Afghanistan. He, too, must be well aware of what happened to Diem in 1963.
Maliki, Musharraf, and others may think they have acquired a certain immunity. They fly to Washington, appear at press conferences with the American President, address Congress. But that’s all fool’s gold. Diem, too, flew to Washington and was a press celebrity. His American ties were solid: three years living in New York and New Jersey, a consultancy at Michigan State, a favorite of New York’s Cardinal Spellman. He must have thought he was safe. But when the Americans decided that he had to go, he had to go.
So why on earth did President Bush decide to stir up memories of Vietnam? In the past, he had always rejected any comparison between Iraq and Vietnam; now he was pushing just this comparison. A cynic might think that he was delivering a not-so-subtle message to Mr. Maliki and President Musharaff.
