Catholics responsible for Vietnam?

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Flavius_Aetius

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Ok well I’m learning about the 60’s in United States History class and we got to the Vietnam War. Now I am not claiming Catholic persecution by my teacher or anything, but it was mentioned that people who had problems with the Catholic Church would mention that Catholics were mostly responsible for the events leading to the Vietnam War.

First and foremost that Ngo Dinh Diem was the President of Vietnam who brutally persecuted his buddist citizens and favored Catholics like himself.

Second it was mentioned that during Eisenhower’s administration his secretary of State; John Foster Dulles wanted America to enter Vietnam to support the South Vietnam government. (He was Catholic) At this time there was perhaps 800 troops serving in Vietnam.

Finally John F Kennedy increased the forces to 16,000 which started what would lead to what was the full Vietnam war.

Now these are not my ideas just things that were mentioned, and I wouldn’t of mentioned this on the forum if I didn’t see so much internal groans from my peers about Catholics being responsible for the Vietnam war.
 
Wow. I grew up with Vietnam on the front pages, and this is the first I ever heard any of this. So all those Catholics weren’t really concerned about Communist expansion like they claimed, but just used that as an excuse? (an excuse for what, exactly? did the Vatican command this?)

Actually I claim it was martini-drinkers who were responsible for Vietnam, and I dare anybody to prove me wrong.
 
If John Foster Dulles was Catholic why did his son, Avery Cardinal Dulles, have to convert to Catholicism? My point is that Dulles was not Catholic, he was the son of a Presbyterian minister and his grandfather was a Presbyterian missionary in China (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles).

So no Dulles was not a Catholic and Catholicism had nothing to do with the Vietnam war. The Vietnamese president was a brutal puppet dicatator that happened to be Catholic and most importantly was opposed to Communism. American foreign policy from the end of WWII was driven by the desire to keep communism from expanding at any and all costs. South Korea and then after that South Vietnam were seen as important pieces in helping to keep SE Asia free of Russian Chinese communist influences.

ChadS
 
As a Catholic who served in Vietnam I would like to offer my opinion.

In the south, their were the “haves and the have nots”. Many influential South Vietnamese were indeed Catholic, but not all. The corruption which existed in the south crossed religious lines. Good Buddhists as well as good Catholics wanted peace and justice.

The communist north thought theirs was a better way for the whole country, and was not above committing numerous atrocities against innocent civilians in order to make their point. The south was not guiltless either, but their way of life was closer to what we view as democracy, than was the communist north.

We see things differently through the the prism of the past. Could the U.S. done things differently (and better)? Of course. But, the engagement of US policy was carried out by mostly well intentioned men.
 
Lyndon Johnson was not a Catholic, and it was Lyndon Johnson and his cadre that fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an excuse to prosecute what grew into the Vietnam War. Your history teacher is an uneducated bigot. His goofball statement concerning John Foster Dulles add an explanation point to that fact.
 
I’d like to thank everyone for the comments, I’m certain the comment was made as a coincidence type thing (Even though from what I know now Dulles wasn’t Catholic to begin with). Though inside I wasn’t appreciative of the comment I’ll simply let it go since I’m sure it was not intended as a personal attack.
 
Before the war even started, Ho Chi Minh had brutally oppressed and virtually enslaved his own people, the North Vietnamese, sending farmers off to re-education camps to be trained in Communist ideology, and destroying family farms to be replaced with collectives.

He then laid out a plan for taking the south through infiltration and finally open invasion. He was brutal, inhuman and oppresive. When the U.S. finally abandoned South Vietnam, the same brutality was carried out in the Communist takeover. Congress, which had previously authorized replenishing the south’s military equipment, completely cut them off. Thousands of South Vietnamese risked near certain death as boat people to escape the communist dictatorship.

As a remedy for the rewriting of history, try reading Michael Lind’s book, Vietnam, The Necessary War.

The Catholic Church is now being oppressed in Vietnam.
 
If you want to know the true reason why the US was involved in Vietnam you need to talk to some of the guys who got involved over there early on and lived to find out what it was really all about.

it was all because the French discovered uranium there and were mining it to fuel their nuclear programs and their domestic nuclear reactors. When they got entangled in a civil war and were getting bloodied they had to pull out. The USA got wind of the rich uranium deposits (probably tipped off by France) and were terrified it would fall into the hands of the Communists - either China or USSR.

So we got involved simply to deny the Communists a source of uranium at the height of the cold war that would have resulted in even greater tonnage of nuclear warheads.

So there you have it. It had nothing to do with human rights, or Americana and apple pie, nor religion nor any political ideology. It was pure mineral exploitation and fear that the Communists would gain it least we got there first.

End of mystery.

James
 
You’ll have to document that. History can’t just be made up out of whole cloth. The U.S. was quite concerned about a pending Communist takeover of all of Vietnam after the French pulled out, and was concerned about a spread of global communism throughout southeast asia. South Vietnam was our ally and requested help. We gave it, although the war did not seriously expand for several years. Read the book.
 
JimG said:
You’ll have to document that. History can’t just be made up out of whole cloth. The U.S. was quite concerned about a pending Communist takeover of all of Vietnam after the French pulled out, and was concerned about a spread of global communism throughout southeast asia. South Vietnam was our ally and requested help. We gave it, although the war did not seriously expand for several years. Read the book.
Click to expand...
Well I must admit that the old sailor told a good story over beers but lost some credibility with his answer to my inquiry as to why he sprinkled salt in his beer. He explained that he was a Messianic Jew who still had these kosher tendencies to season everything with sea salt. I suppose I should have taken it all with a grain of salt myself since he stuck me with the tab… 😉

James
 
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