Lodge was convinced that Diem was “simply unbelievably stubborn,” as he told Rusk earlier in his report. Lodge was like a Southern landowner dismissing a nonconforming black sharecropper as “stubborn.” So Lodge thought Diem must have meant to say, “I will not give in,” rather than “I will not serve.” Stubbornness, not principle, was what Lodge was prepared to deal with in terms of the “chicken” metaphor, or head-on crash scenario, that he was following in his strategy toward Diem.
