The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

Nothing, however, could have been more naÏve than Dulles’ statement that the United States would now enter Vietnam without a trace of colonialism, for the sides were already drawn. The Vietminh were supremely confident that they could gain ascendancy in the South either through elections or through subversion and guerrilla warfare. They were a modern force, and the one opposing them in the South was feudal. By now they were the heroes of their people: they had driven out the French and stirred the powerful feelings of nationalism in the country. During the war the Vietminh had done more than expel the French. They had taken Vietnamese society, which under colonial rule had been so fragmented and distrustful, where only loyalty to family counted, and given it a broader cause and meaning, until that which bound them together was more powerful than that which divided them. This, then, had made them a nation in the true sense.