by K. V. Turley | The Dispatch at Catholic World Report
Geoffrey Shaw's The Lost Mandate of Heaven recounts how Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of the Republic of Vietnam, was taken down and murdered by a military coup sponsored by the U.S. government
Early on November 2, 1963, the then President of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his brother, Nhu, had just heard Holy Mass at a church in a suburb of Saigon. They had fled there the previous evening having received word of a military coup. After Mass, the brothers remained for some time, deep in silent prayer. For Diem, there was nothing unusual in this. He had been a daily communicant for most of his life, and this early morning routine of Mass and private prayer had become an integral part of his life and indeed of his presidency. That morning, however, was to be different.
Soon, there came the sound of American Jeeps and an armored personnel carrier driven by Vietnamese soldiers no longer loyal to the legitimate head of state. They found their president, alongside his brother, still knelt in prayer before an image of Our Lady. Both men were seized and bundled into the back of the personnel carrier. There, awaiting them, was a soldier with bayonet drawn, who proceeded to cut out Diem’s gallbladder. Once this torture had been completed, both brothers were summarily shot. 
Why did the plotting general want Diem and his brother Nhu, a trusted advisor and confidante, dead? One of the generals said later: “They had to be killed. Diem could not be allowed to live because he was too much respected among simple gullible people in the countryside, especially [by] the Catholics and the refugees [from North Vietnam]”. Just over ten years later, the penultimate President of South Vietnam, Tran Van Huong, was to remark as his country’s slid inexorably towards capitulation to the Viet-Cong: “The generals knew very well that having no talent, no moral virtues, no political support whatsoever, they could not prevent a spectacular comeback of [Diem]” if he had been left alive.
A new book from Ignatius Press, The Lost Mandate Of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam by Geoffrey Shaw, examines these events, placing the shocking murder of the two Ngo Dinh brothers in its historical context. Also on display is the part American foreign policy played in this. Furthermore, and more disturbing still, the book points the finger of blame for complicity in these murders not at some shadowy group working outside the bounds of legitimate political control, but at the US President, and fellow Catholic, John F. Kennedy.
From Hanoi in the north, the Communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, reportedly said on hearing of the assassination: “I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid.” What had just taken place was far more than short-sighted stupidity, however, as what had been sanctioned in the murders unleashed upon Vietnam and her neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos (and, indeed, America herself) a bloody nightmare that haunts to this day.
The Lost Mandate of Heaven is a formidable piece of scholarship. Mr Shaw has left no stone unturned in putting together the pieces of the jigsaw of the last days and final betrayal of Diem by the Vietnamese Generals and their American collaborators. If one wishes to retain a benign view of American foreign policy then it’s best not to read further. If, however, one is not surprised by the political machinations that lead to a just man dying – with its echoes of the call for one man’s death to benefit a whole nation – then this account will only confirm one’s belief in the nature of this fallen world in which global and national politics are but the reflections, for better or worse, of what is in men’s hearts.
Born on January 3, 1901, Diem was raised a Catholic. He came from a family and background that combined Christian faith and Catholic social teaching with the Confucian ideals of serving the common good. It was to prove a formidable combination in his political career.
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