President Diem’s Election and the United States reactions

 Ngo Dinh Diem was born in 1901 in Vietnam. His family was a very strong catholic family and he attended a French Catholic school. In the late 1940’s Diem went to the United States and he met with many powerful men such as John F Kennedy. He convinced them that he would make an excellent leader for South Vietnam when the French left. He came to power in 1955 thanks to the United States support, however once he came to power they realized he wasn’t very willing to work with them, and rejected a lot of their support. There was later a vote between Diem and Bo Dai, however this election was not completely fair. When the Vietnamese people showed up for voting they were threatened to vote for Diem. He won the vote with 98.2% of the vote even though he was not liked very much by the people.  When Diem was informed that he had to win the general election as well. So he started arresting his opponents mainly going for communists and socialists. Diem now had power in South Vietnam and was pressuring his religion on the region that was mostly Buddhist. The United States intentions were to unite South Vietnam with the north and get rid of communism. At first the United States was protecting Diem and they protected him from any attacks. After a while they realized that president Diem was un popular and not listening to them. They eventually stopped protecting him and Diem was overthrown in November of 1963. President Diem was elected just before the beginning of the Vietnam War. It helped start the beginning of the war because the United States were supporting president Diem and he was not a very liked man from his ways. The original hope was that he would be a good leader to unite Vietnam and create peace. He was against there religion and he did not help with calming down what was happening in Vietnam.

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