0 - The Black Vault

I
THE 8DM CORPORATION
and dangers as regular ARVN troops.
As a result, they fared very poorly by
I comparison, especially in the areas of training and logistic support, and
in command and leadership.75/
7, Early Program Results and Impact on The War Effort
The US
tended to view the early military and political successes
of Ngo Dinh Piem's government with satisfaction, and to regard thereafter
South Vietnam's internal security with growing complacency. Di2m and his
brother Nhu were not so complacent. On the contrary, they were very conscious
of the threat posed by the former Viet Minh guerrillas (more dangerous
tran the Cao Dai and Binh Xuyen sects), not only because they were
politically more persuasive, and had taught a generation of Vietnamese
peasants the techniques of ermed conspiracy, but also because their tenets
offered competing solutions to the most pressing problems of the Vietnamese
people -- land and livelihoooa.76/ Tho Ngo brother's approach as a broad
concept is hard to fault:
The RVNAF were to reclaim regions of the countryside
formerly held by the Viet Minh; poli'.ical indoctrination teams
moving with the troops would carry the message of Diem"s revolution to the
people; and then a broad follow-up program of Civic Acton -- political and
social development, land reform and agricultural improvements--would oe
inaugurated to meet the aspirations- )f the people7_77/
miscarried, as well as the subsequent agglomeration camps,
Strategic Hamlet Programs, was due in part to the following:-
That these plans
Agrovilles and
0 Resistance on tne part of the rural population and farmers,
reicting sometimes under VC
pressure and sometimes simply out of
peasant conservatism (people in the Mekong Delta Region--40% of
the total population -- have traditionally resisted central
authority).
* Ineipt, overbearing or corrupt GVN officials.
- Diem's (and his brother's) unremitting anticommunist zeal, and
tne failure of both Diem and his US advisers to appreciate the
mdgnitude of the tasks they set for themselves or the time
required to create meaningful reform.
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