| November 9 |  |
Editor says, what if Kennedy had pulled out of Vietnam, yet his initial engagement plan had been radically different? This story was published in the November 2009 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
| Share this Article on: |  Facebook |  Twitter |
In 1963, on this day US President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 in the Oval Office. Accordingly the force of law was given to the planned withdrawal of all American personnel absolutely no later than the end of 1965. Because just four months after a Vietnamese Buddhist by the name of Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire in a Saigon street (pictured), the security situation in the country was rapidly deteriorating.
Bear any burden, pay any priceIn so doing, the Kennedy brothers were backtracking big-time on a key inauguration pledge to "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge - and more".
Yet two other Catholic brothers had even more reason to regret listening to those warm words, the Vietnamese Dictator Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. Because on the celebration of Buddha's 2,527 birthday on May 8th, the Diem Regime had ordered the Catholic deputy in Hue to prevent the Buddhists from flying their own flag. A wave of religious fervour swept the county. And just about the last thing South Vietnam needed right now was a religious feud, and so a group of generals led by Doung Van Minh and Tran Van Don acting unilaterally without US approval overthrew the Diem regime and executed the brothers and their sister-in-law, the anti-Buddhist "dragon lady" Madame Nhu. The US-financed Nationalist Chinese Armies who had sustained Diem in power since 1962 also evacuated the country. Those departing soldiers had been resettled by the French in 1950 in what was then Chochin China and expanded over time by local recruitment.
Commander R. Sargent Shriver was the last American out of Saigon. He told Embassy staff that it was a matter of deep regret that the Peace Corps had been unable to complete their mission in Vietnam.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© "The Vietnam War for Dummies", Frankum and Maxner (2003)Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beacon of Liberty Source: Wikipedia Labels: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, America, Cold War, Forties.
~ Timing is ever so slighlt off. . The Diems are already dead and the US look like equine feces for approving the coup and THEN bugging out. Now if the coup and murders had not happened we would have been out MUCH faster than 1965. Once the US was bugging out the Diem regime implodes. France brokers a face saving neutralist regime while Diem, Nhu and their ten thousand closest supporters leave for Paris. We are out by Easter of 1964. We also probably inherit several million refugees or look REAL bad.
~ IIRC, the Viet Cong was still intact, so a northern takover is not a given here....
~ Kennedy did issue and order for the withdrawal of about 1,000 troops. Three weeks later, he was assassinated, and one of incoming President Johnson's first acts in office was to rescind that order.
That said, I doubt Kennedy would have issued an order for total withdrawal that early. The Republicans would have skewered him for it in the 1964 election campaign. If he were going to withdraw, he'd wait to issue the order until after he'd been safely re-elected.
~ Instead of the last copter off the roof of the embassy you have a shrinking perimeter around the few remaining ports while 7th fleet does a Dunkirk on steroids.
~ This is a steroid-free zone, mister! :)
~ All it would have taken to win the war in Vietnam at any time was a month long campaign of blockade of North Vietnamese ports and pounding some railroad bridges near China. That's it. It worked in 72 and would have worked in 63, and half a million lives would have been saved.
~ In 1962 the Soviets still had the use of the Chinese rail net. Wouldn't have worked the way Linebacker II did.
~ I don't know if South Vietnam could have been saved---as I understand it, the people running it were both corrupt and seen as pro-French by ordinary folks. That said, after 1975 the Vietnamese people found out why replacing King Log with King Stork was a baaad idea...
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
