The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot

In addition to this Cassandra-like twelve-page report, Lansdale penned a separate thirteen-page memorandum on his experiences with Father Hoa.13 His intent was to balance out the more negative tone of his main report by holding out hope that successful resistance to the Vietcong was still possible if the Sea Swallows’ example was emulated elsewhere. Yet his case study did not address the main reason why the experience of Binh Hung was not readily applicable in other parts of South Vietnam: much of Father Hoa’s community was made up of Catholics, who were ideologically distinct from the mainstream Vietnamese population and largely impervious to appeals from atheist insurgents. Lansdale later argued that there were other “free villages” out there—“Catholic villages, Hoa Hao villages etc.”—that could be pillars of a successful counterinsurgency strategy.14 But keeping the Vietcong out of ordinary Vietnamese villages without a distinctive religious identity would prove much tougher.