Krulak–Mendenhall mission
The Krulak–Mendenhall mission was a fact-finding expedition dispatched by the Kennedy administration to South Vietnam in early September 1963. The stated purpose of the expedition was to investigate the progress of the war by the South Vietnamese regime and its US military advisers against the Viet Cong insurgency. The mission was led by major general in the United States Marine Corps, while Joseph Mendenhall was a senior Foreign Service Officer experienced in dealing with Vietnamese affairs. It was the first mission to be led by a US Marine Corps general and the first to be conducted by a Foreign Service officer.
About Krulak–Mendenhall mission in brief
The Krulak–Mendenhall mission was a fact-finding expedition dispatched by the Kennedy administration to South Vietnam in early September 1963. The stated purpose of the expedition was to investigate the progress of the war by the South Vietnamese regime and its US military advisers against the Viet Cong insurgency. The mission was led by major general in the United States Marine Corps, while Joseph Mendenhall was a senior Foreign Service Officer experienced in dealing with Vietnamese affairs. The four-day whirlwind trip was launched on September 6, 1963, the same day as a National Security Council meeting, and came in the wake of increasingly strained relations between the U.S. and South Vietnam. The inconclusive report was the subject of bitter and personal debate among Kennedy’s senior advisers. It resulted in a follow-up mission, the McNamara–Taylor mission, which was sent on September 14, 1963 and ended on September 16, 1963. It was the first mission to be led by a US Marine Corps general and the first to be conducted by a Foreign Service officer. It followed the Huế Phật Đản shootings on May 8, which left a death toll estimated to be up to several hundred and caused extensive damage under the declaration of martial law. After the raids on Buddhist pagodas on August 21 that left a few hundred, the US authorized investigations into a possible coup through a cable to US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. The divergent reports led US President John F. Kennedy to ask his two advisers “You two did visit the same country, didn’t you?” The report was never published and the mission was canceled on September 18, 1963 after the death of Thích Quᚣng Đức at a busy Saigon intersection became a public relations disaster for the Diệm regime.
At the end of the mission, it was agreed that the report was more of a priority to bring John Mecklin and John Rufus Phillips back from Saigon to Washington, D.C., to bring the report back to US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the pair began the mission later that day to bring it back to Saigon on September 19. The report concluded that the Vietnamese soldiers’ efforts in the field would not be affected by the public’s unease with President Ngô Đình Di Vietnamese’s policies. It also concluded that Di Vietnamese policies increased the possibility of religious civil war, and were causing South Vietnamese to believe that life under the VietCong would improve the quality of their lives. In the meantime, rumors of sectarian infighting amongst ARVN troops had begun to lose intensity. This was compounded by the plotting of various officers, which distracted attention from the insurgency, ordering the US Embassy to send an ARVVN officer to investigate alternative leadership possibilities. The self-immolation of Buddhist monk ThíCh QuẢng Đônh Qu�ỉn, who was shot by the Catholic regime, made front-page headlines worldwide and became a symbol of Diᝉm’s policies. The President’s brother and chief political adviser was seen as the major causes of the political problems.
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This page is based on the article Krulak–Mendenhall mission published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
