Ngô Đình Diệm

The South Vietnamese government was highly unstable.

It was completely fractured by coups, especially after the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963.

Right.

Then the NVA had total sanctuary just across the border in Cambodia and Laos.

It was a monster.

And on this date in 1963, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were killed following a military coup.

And their deaths deepen the political instability and what would become American involvement in Vietnam.

Oh, what a mess.

As of this year, the country of Ecuador sharply cut ties with Cuba.

South Vietnam The Diem coup in South Vietnam began in November 1, 1963.

This coup was, of course, enabled by the United States to stop the spread of communism.

Buddhists in the area were facing oppression at the hands of Ngo Dinh Diem, who was Catholic.

Initially, Diem and the United States were aligned in the fights against communism.

President John F. Kennedy wanted the conflict resolved.

Instead, things escalated.

The United States continued to fund the military during this period.

Yet they continued to send thousands of young men to die to avoid the political embarrassment of defeat.

They revealed secret, unreported bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia and the U.S. government's complicity in the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Ellsberg realized the public was making democratic choices based on a foundation of absolute lies.

So he decides to pull the ultimate thread.

And so there's always this sort of like, well, who are you? Are you the country of Jefferson and Franklin? Or are you just looking to come down here to our country to exploit cheap labor and our natural resources? And that's just sort of the dichotomy that we project around the world.

In Vietnam, it was even more difficult because the government there, this was the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, when I lived there, and they were experiencing sort of a civil war with the North.

the country had been split apart by the Western powers in 54, just kind of cut in half at the 54 parallel.

And which, you know, was a crazy thing to do.

It's not entirely forgotten.

Even in Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, who was the leader of South Vietnam at the time, you know, remembered what happened in Taiwan in 1957.

But it doesn't lead to any immediate change.

It's still going to be a few years before a SOFA agreement is reached between Taiwan and the United States.

The agency provided weapons and support to the conspirators, and Trujillo was ambushed and shot in 1961.

Then there was Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam, a Catholic leader ruling a Buddhist majority country.

Diệm was authoritarian and unpopular, but he was also America's handpicked ally, until he wasn't.

As his rule became more unstable, US officials decided he had to go.

The CIA didn't pull the trigger, but it supported the coup that led to Diệm's assassination in 1963.

His death threw South Vietnam into chaos, a chaos that would ultimately drag America deeper into the Vietnam War.

Other plots targeted Chilean President Salvador Allende, a socialist who won a democratic election in 1970.

That's, Trump, Trump doesn't like stuff like that.

Uh, maybe it's time for Zelensky to have the Ngo Dinh Diem experience.

The what?

The Ngo Dinh Diem experience.

I have no idea.

The, the leader of, the leader of South Vietnam.