Coups past and future

With all the rumors and speculation about the Cheney-Bush administration threatening to back a coup against our allied government in Iraq, it's worth remembering the very mixed experience that the US has had with such adventures in the past.

Like the assissination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 by coup leaders supported by the United States. 

In his new book Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (2006), John Prados reminds us of that experience and its aftermath:

Asked almost two decades later for his opinion of U.S. support for the Diem coup, Edward Lansdale replied, "I think we should never have done it.  We destroyed the Vietnamese Constitution, not we, but the people we were working with, threw it in the waste basket."  Indeed, CIA support flew in the face of America's commitment to democracy and left the United States embroiled in a war that it remained ill suited for, could not win, and could not walk away from. Washington's search for military effectiveness stood revealed as deeper than its support for democracy. Those who argue that Jack Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam have never been able to get past the consequences of the Diem coup, which President Kennedy, after all, supported.  The maneuver eliminated all possible flexibility in U.S. policy.  As for the suggestion that the CIA ought to be excused on the basis of its opposition to the coup, this is based on the secret record of its (excessive) policy role rather than the discoverable one of its agents on the street in Saigon.  As a practical matter, public and world opinion would be dictated by the discoverable record, not the secret one.

Several more coups occurred before 1967, when Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu and Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky consolidated control in Saigon.  Langley's [the CIA's] political action people made numerous efforts to deepen political support for the regime.  Washington repeatedly encouraged Thieu and Ky, as it had Diem, to broaden their base and construct a democracy, but the South Vietnamese institutions created in 1966-1967 never blossomed, and the Saigon regime's failure never resulted in sanctions from Washington.  That too says something about the U.S. commitment to democracy.  (my emphasis)