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The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam By Geoffrey Shaw San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2015 314 pages $24.95
The brutal assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngô Dinh Diem during the coup that overthrew his government on November 2, 1963, remains one of the most pivotal moments of American involvement in what was becoming the American war in Vietnam. Diem's critics believed the Catholic mandarin was doing more harm than good to his country. With an intensifying Viet Cong insurgency threatening provincial regions across South Vietnam and internal strife taking the form of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Quang Pac, South Vietnam teetered on the brink of collapse, so it seemed.
Diem had failed to implement social and political reforms demanded by the Kennedy administration. With the political and military situations worsening, President Kennedy reluctantly agreed with his more hawkish advisers that Diem had to go. Never supportive of Diem, Kennedy's new ambassador to the Republic of Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., gave the green light for a group of politically ambitious South Vietnamese army generals to overthrow Diem and his corrupt government. In the confusion of the coup, Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu met a bloody end at the hands...