Dienbienphu

When President Diem of South Vietnam was assassinated on Nov. 2, 1963, JFK had less than three weeks to live. The martyred American president got a bum rap at the time. There were many who suspected Kennedy had Diem bumped off, but he had only withdrawn America's support from his fellow Catholic, leading South Vietnamese generals to pull a coup d'etat against Diem and his family. Madame Nhu, Diem's sister-in-law, was the dragon lady of the time, demonized by the liberals in the U.S. media as being too plush and too tough on the Buddhists. Poor old Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were shot down like dogs. The liberal left in America had won its first great victory.

I have always believed that Diem's death sealed South Vietnam's fate. Diem was the only effective leader the South ever had, ergo the campaign by fellow travelers in the United States to unseat him.

Here's a very brief look at Vietnamese history: The Vietnamese were under Chinese rule from the second century BC to 939, when they revolted and founded their own empire. They remained independent until the mid-19th century, when the French took control over what was known as Indochina?Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Japan occupied all of Indochina during World War II, and in 1945 a Communist revolt in Hanoi led by Ho Chi Minh resulted in final French defeat in 1954.

In the spring of 1954 I was in boarding school in America. Back then we did not have the mass communications of today, but relied mostly on weekly newsmagazines like Time and Newsweek. The French command in Vietnam, having decided to lure the Vo Nguyen Giap-led Vietminh forces into a classic battle in the hollow punchbowl that was Dienbienphu, had named Gen. Christian Marie Ferdinand de la Croix de Castries to lead the battle. De Castries was a character straight out of central casting. A dashing cavalry officer from an old and distinguished family, he would have been played to perfection by Errol Flynn. Although married, de Castries had won over more ladies than he had won battles. He named each of the lookout posts surrounding Dienbienphu after his numerous mistresses. The trouble was that two of them (mistresses, that is) were both named Eliane, so he called one post Eliane 1, the other Eliane 2. (Also an Isabelle, a Katherine and so on...)

Mind you, not that the papers reported such details, but my father, who had just named a ship after Gen. Patton, was in the loop. He told me all about the brilliance of de Castries, in bed and out, and that he was a remarkable officer, an admirable cavalryman with an instinctive feeling for the terrain. Under Napoleon, de Castries would surely have become a marshal, but in Dienbienphu, he was trapped even before he took over.

The French military high command, Navarre and Cogny, were glamorous but suffered from megalomania. Staff officers with big ideas would stick little flags on maps as proof these places were easy to defend and almost impossible to penetrate. They never suspected that Giap would transport heavy artillery across triple canopy jungle and pulverize them. The politicians back in Paris were acting like politicians everywhere. They demanded a quick and bloodless victory and the sooner the better. This contributed to Cogny's and Navarre's launching the greatest operation in the Indochinese war.

No one can ever describe a vicious and bloody battle like Dienbienphu as romantic, but romantic it was. The "Angel of Dienbienphu," Genevieve de Galard, became an international heroine when she refused to be evacuated, and stayed until the bitter end tending to the wounded. The giant Cogny, speaking to diminutive de Castries from Hanoi 200 miles away, was told by the latter that raising the white flag once all was lost would save the lives of about 2000 wounded lying in the outside perimeters, but that "it would be a pity after such a good show." "Just stop firing but don't raise the white flag," came the reply from Hanoi. De Castries refused to hoist the flag of shame, stood calm in front of his post as the Viets rushed in, and died in his bed some 50 years later.

When the announcement of the defeat was read out in a hushed French senate, deputies openly wept. My father rang and told me the bad news, and his voice cracked. The Americans, who had refused air cover to the French, were to replace them in the Vietnamese quagmire seven years later.

You know the rest. Kennedy and Johnson escalated the war and Nixon brought it to what would have been a successful conclusion but for Watergate. The North invaded and took over in April 1975.

Of all the courageous men who were betrayed by the French and American governments throughout the 30-year war, Bob Kerrey hardly stands out. He did his duty in a dirty war, and he should be proud of it. Scum like Bill Clinton stayed out; at least Kerrey went in. He should count himself lucky he's a Democrat. If he were not a bleeding heart, he would have been crucified by the American elite, who never fight but always have a voice against Uncle Sam.