"HOW WE FAILED TO STOP A WAR"
A discrete mission executed privately
against the designs of powerful people.

The war began in skirmishes, building up over time into full-fledged combat, circa 1960. The US role at first was more political and economic, very few boots on the ground. And the South Vietnam army, ARVN, was holding its own against the battle-hardened army of the north, PAVN & Viet Cong (the later being South Vietnamese Communist gorillas). From the beginning, Diem's sister-in-law worked to reform South Vietnam society in favour of those who deserved more civil rights. Under her influence, the Diem government enforced the banning of concubines. The economy was modernizing under Diem until full-on war intervened. As it escalated, more Americans began to turn up in Saigon with strongly worded suggestions on how the ARVN could better execute their side of the war - suggestions which bordered on directives. Diem and his family, university educated and English speaking, began to resent such treatment. Madame Nhu gave interviews to the English speaking media, in which she defended her countries sovereignty.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson visited in 1961, accompanied by the head of a prominent New England political family, Henry Cabot Lodge, one of the most hawkish government advisers on Vietnam. He would become US Ambassador there. The Government of South Vietnam early on realized that American politicians, the military and the intelligence community acted as though they had a plan B which involved replacing the independent Diem government with a puppet regime which would permit the US - unfettered by local authorities - to engage directly against the North. So, powerful forces in America began to beat the drums for direct control over the conflict: drums of war. Madame Nhu, in an attempt to raise the visibility of Saigon's sovereignty, made herself ever more available to take US broadcast interviews. Ordinary Americans tuned in with interest. In consequence conservative American Politicians, right-wing press and spokes-persons for the military-industrial complex began to revile her as an impediment to their aspirations. They began to refer to her as "the Dragon Lady". All this pressure on Saigon from the American war lobby reached a tipping point in the summer of 1963. Serious irreversible action by Washington against Saigon seemed imminent. On the urging of prominent friends in London and Washington, Madam Nhu applied for a visa to visit the US. Her mission would be to speak directly to the American people. To describe to them the black cloud that was approaching her country, pushed there by the US Government and military interests, and if the American public was not in favour of what was about to be done in their name; "Do please exercise your right as free people living in a Republic: and stop it". To accomplish her goal Madame Nhu would need to get her message onto the national news networks, and talk shows, she would need to hold press conferences and meet one-on-one with American influencers. She would be on an all-or-nothing mission to divert the calamity she and informed friends could see coming. At the last minute, the US Government rejected Madame Nhu's visa. Peter Howard, a well known British journalist, author and playwright - her friend - along with a small team on both sides of the Atlantic, formulated a plan to outflank the US politicians and authorities who thought they had removed "Dragon Lady's" threat to their dark scheme with the stroke of a rejection stamp. To put this into perspective, the United States of America had never, and has never since, refused a visa to a prominent member of a friendly Government.

Our plan was for Madame Nhu to issue herself a Vietnamese Passport in her maiden name. Immediately one of the team obtained, through a friend at the US consul in London, a US visa for a Vietnamese lady of that name. Two days later Madame Nhu arrived in New York City, ready to go to work. We got her on two nightly talk shows and one-morning news program before the FBI came after us. Thereafter, like fugitives, we went from city to city making the occasional surprise visit to local TV and radio stations (always leaving after only 15 minutes) and from pay phones, she gave interviews with newspapers and call-in appearances on live broadcast radio and TV networks. She was in the country for a total of six days before we had to spirit her across the border into Canada. Madame Nhu flew back to Vietnam from Vancouver. A normal appearance for her on US media would go something like this. After being introduced, she would deliver a message: "Dear American friends, please hear me. We in South Vietnam are your friends, and it is our sincere desire to continue this friendship forever. I must tell you, however, as a friend, there are some people in your Government, your military and secret service who wish to engage in an all-out war with North Vietnam. A war which, if it comes, will be fought in my country, over the rice fields and in the home towns of our beloved people. If you permit this to happen, many innocent children, women and men will be killed. Many of your young men will be killed as well. My husband and his brother, the President of the Republic of Vietnam, are determined to not let this unnecessary loss of life takes place, as am I. Here is what is about to take place if you do not stop it: the CIA, following the advice of Mr Henry Cabot Lodge, will initiate a Buddhist Coup against the Government of the Republic of Vietnam. The President, his brother (my husband) and I: will be assassinated. The head of the army will become the acting head of Government. He will take orders from the US Military and the CIA. When this man gets into power, your military and politicians will fabricate an excuse to declare all-out war on North Vietnam. America will station thousands and thousands of troops, ships and aircraft in and around South Vietnam, and will unleash a bloody war against the Army of the North and the Viet Cong. Please, my friends, please exercise whatever power you have: stage protest events, call politicians, write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper; use any influence you can find to stop what your mighty country is about to do against their friend; my little country. For the sake of your young men and for the sake of all my people at home: please do this". This was her message. She also often went off script to add: "I am also bound to tell you that. if the United States makes this tragic error in my country: what it starts will end very badly for the United States of America. Please know this, and believe it."

.

First reactions to her message were all we could have hoped for. There were impromptu demonstrations on university campuses. Soon, however, a non-stop barrage from the conservative Press, Network News and political commentary, full of invective against Madame Nhu, turned things back around. She was characterized as "That Dragon Lady who had "entered America illegally", "everything she's saying is a lie, no such events as she predicts are about to take place", "the regime she is part of is completely corrupt and subjects the poor South Vietnam people to unspeakable human rights violations". "She is only here in a desperate attempt to keep her family in power." Three months later the coup she had predicted happened; her husband and brother-in-law were assassinated by the head of the Army, who assumed the title of the head of state. Madame Nhu escaped with her children, to begin a long widowhood in exile. The Vatican first took her in. She and her daughters got away from Vietnam taking with them no more than the clothes they stood up in. Six months later a naval destroyer, the USS Maddox, cruising off North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The destroyer, with help from fighter/bombers from the near-bye aircraft carrier, USS Ticonderoga, drove off the attackers without damage to the Maddox. Next day the Maddox again raised the alarm, claiming to be under attack by the same NV torpedo boats. The US Congress speedily approved the declaration that "A state of war exists between the United States of America an the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DVR´- North Vietnam)". Soon, Much of the US's military might and machines began to arrive in Vietnam. The events of the next eleven years, unlike previous US military adventures; did little to cover the Stars and Stripes with glory. From defoliating much of Vietnam by spraying the chemical 'Agent Orange' from high altitude tankers - to getting caught by surprise in the 1968 Tet offensive - and retaliating three months later with the Me Lai massacre, the victims including many women and children - and finally to the desperate flight of every American in country to reach the safety of US evacuation ships, when the North Vietnamese army reached the outskirts of Saigon. It was the only war. up until then, in which America was ever defeated.

By coincidence (or not), Henry Cabot Lodge, the man who had helped start it all in ´63-´64: was tasked to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh in 1975, an official treaty acknowledging defeat. Little attention was ever paid to the final results of an examination into the facts pertaining to the torpedo attack on USS Maddox in the Tonkin Gulf. It was, after all, the touchstone the US Government used to excuse its all-encompassing invasion of a small East Asin country. Some investigators determined the Maddox had provoked the initial attack by having landed Commandos behind North Vietnamese lines. And that a second torpedo attack never actually happened. The episode was a pretext for declaring war. [Not unlike the phantom WMDs which. in the 21st century. would be the license for America to launch 'Iraq War II']

And what of Peter Howard, the British journalist, author, playwright who brought together the maverick team who attempted to staunch the Vietnam War? Fourteen months after the assassinations of Diém and Nhu, Peter travelled to Peru at the head of a social mission. Upon arrival in Lima: he suddenly died. The official cause was viral pneumonia, which allegedly took him almost immediately after coming into contact with it. Knowing Peter Howard, however, one is sceptical about this. Peter was 58 when he died, exercised daily, had no unhealthy habits, had the body of an ex-world class athlete: he had, after all, captained the English National Rugby Team, and won the world bobsled championship. And what of Madame Nhu? She who fought with everything good at her disposal to save the things she loved. Up close she did not seem the champion of a great cause: she was demure and feminine, as attractive inside as on the surface. There was no Dragon Lady in her. Oh yes, and the same yellow journalists who gave her the title of "Dragon Lady"; upon learning her husband had been assassinated and she not; gave her a new title: "Lady Macbeth". Her widowhood in exile would last forty-eight years. Those of us who know the facts hear revealed believe Madame Nhu should receive a more fitting title: "mother of the Vietnam Protest Movement'. And what of the rest of us? Some followed in Peter Howard's footsteps: to Peru. There we founded a social mission, not unlike that which had taken Peter there thirty-six years earlier. We spent the better part of two decades; mostly fruitful years when we spread our good project throughout South America: Bruce Peru. On our return to Europe we leave behind more than a dozen duplicate projects, ones we planted and nurtured like seedlings: and which now have stories of their own to tell. In keeping with our colleagues, some of us have experienced more than life's usual bumps and brushes along the way: maligned in the press, bank accounts at times frozen for no apparent reason, taken into custody at airports - only to be released two hours later (after connecting flights had left). In fact, whenever any of us lifted our head above the parapet - published something, were mentioned in a Wall Street or Broadway article, had an exhibition of paintings, opened a European charity in America (Emmaus, Restos de Coeur): as soon as someone somewhere connected the dots: we got slammed in the press - and if a pretext could be floated, in the judiciary as well. However, all such problems notwithstanding, I know every one of us still living: we would do it all over again. Imagine the number of lives, the suffering and the sadness we might have prevented, had we succeeded in preventing US Forces from going into Vietnam. And what of the Vietnam War? 2 million civilians died, 1.1 million North Vietnamese & Viet Cong fighters died, 200,000+ South Vietnamese soldiers died, 58,000 US military personnel died. The North Vietnamese won and went on to rid Cambodia of the genocidal Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot. And what of Vietnam, the country? Doing fairly well as a communist market economy (oxymoron), 8% economic growth in 2018.