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

by David Halberstam

This was reflected in the leadership. The North was led by a man who had expelled the foreigners, the South by a man who had been installed by foreigners. Ho Chi Minh had been in exile during the worst years of French colonialism because he could not speak openly and remain in Vietnam; Diem had gone into exile during the most passionate war of liberation because he did not approve of the Vietminh. Ho did not need foreign aid to hold power, his base had deep roots in the peasant society which had driven out foreigners. Diem could not have survived for a week without foreign aid; he was an American creation which fit American political needs and desires, not Vietnamese ones. By Vietnamese standards, there was little legitimacy; Diem was a Catholic in a Buddhist country, a Central Vietnamese in the South, but most important of all, he was a mandarin, a member of the feudal aristocracy in a country swept by revolution.