Gulf of Tonkin

10 Key excerpts on "Gulf of Tonkin"

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  Teaching U.S. History as Mystery

  • David Gerwin, Jack Zevin(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  There are many mysteries to choose from concerning Vietnam, but from the perspective of U.S. involvement in a major shooting war, perhaps the clearest place to begin is the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the resolution that followed. As we will see, it is often compared with the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Although both U.S. involvement and the prior involvement of the French with Vietnam date to earlier times, this is the resolution that authorized the president to directly involve U.S. troops in offensive missions against North Vietnam. This resolution made possible the deployment of major U.S. land forces in Vietnam.

  What happened in the Gulf of Tonkin and how did it lead to the congressional resolution? Most textbooks dispense with the Gulf of Tonkin incident in about four sentences:

  1. In early August 1964 the North Vietnamese fired on one or two American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
  2. Although there was some doubt at the time about the attack taking place, and now near certainty that there was no attack (remember the Maine whose sinking prompted the 1898 Spanish–American War . . . even though it now seems that it was not attacked), the Johnson administration used this moment to respond in force, directly attacking North Vietnam with American fire power.
  3. More significantly, the attack served as the trigger for a congressional resolution that gave the President a blank check—the right to take “all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” (Tonkin Gulf Resolution, see next chapter).
  4. The resolution passed the House unanimously and only two senators voted against it; shortly after this, Johnson dramatically escalated U.S. involvement in the war.

  These accurate and dry sentences display the weakness (in our view) of most history textbooks and some history teaching. In the rush to cover everything in an inoffensive way, they never let students work at any of the little mysteries that can be so much fun to tackle, and so satisfying to solve.

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  Vietnam Documents: American and Vietnamese Views

  American and Vietnamese Views

  • George Katsiaficas(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter III The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

  DOI: 10.4324/9781315698366-3

  The United States never declared war on Vietnam, but the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (Document 11) was a functional equivalent. In response to reported attacks on American ships by North Vietnam in August 1964 in the Tonkin Gulf (off the coast of North Vietnam), Congress overwhelmingly approved a resolution authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to "take all necessary measures" to prevent further attacks. With the approval of Congress in hand, President Johnson acted quickly. He personally reviewed the targets for bombing North Vietnam and made a television appearance in which he announced the attacks on U.S. ships, assuring the public that "a reply is being given as I speak to you tonight." On the next day, sixty-four sorties against four North Vietnamese targets were flown, and an estimated 25 vessels were destroyed or damaged. Two American airplanes were lost and the pilot of one of those planes, Lt. Everett Alvarez, Jr., of San Jose, California, became the first American prisoner of war. At that time, opinion polls were strongly behind the administration's actions, with 85 percent of the public supporting a military response to North Vietnam.

  The United States had been involved in covert actions against North Vietnam since the Geneva Convention of 1954, but these bombing raids were the first American air strikes on the North. Those directing American foreign policy had long been searching for a pretext to introduce American combat troops and air power into the conflict, and the Tonkin Gulf events provided them with the opportunity.

  Although rarely talked about today, there were many reasons why direct U.S. intervention in Vietnam was necessary in 1964. After the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963, the stability of the government and army of South Vietnam was precarious. In a period of a few months, regimes came and went in rapid succession. When he visited South Vietnam in 1964, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara privately worried that the government of South Vietnam might crumble at any moment. Although he issued a statement of confidence intended for public consumption, he alerted the Johnson administration to the fact that without U.S. troops becoming involved in Vietnam, it could easily come to pass that the regime in Saigon would be overrun by the NLF, an event that would cause the United States not only to lose face in the eyes of a watchful world but to lose a strategic ally in the struggle against what was perceived as Soviet expansionism.

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  Educating About Social Issues in the 20th and 21st Centuries Vol. 2

  • Samuel Totten, Jon Pedersen(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Educating About Social Issues in the 20th and 21st Centuries, pages 161–188 Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 161 CHAPTER 10 THE VIETNAM WAR Dilemmas of Power Mary Beth Henning Todd Johnson At the core of teaching issue-centered lessons about the Vietnam War is the concept of power—who uses it, who has the right to use it, and how should it be used? Vietnam provides content and context for issues that continue to challenge American citizens and the international community. Gulf of Tonkin: THE POWER OF THE PRESIDENT On August 7, 1964, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolu- tion in response to attacks on U.S. naval vessels along the coast of North Vietnam. Although not an official declaration of war, passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution marked the official beginning of American military action (beyond the heavy advisory role that President Kennedy had autho- rized earlier) in Vietnam. Some details of the naval attack on August 2 are in dispute (perhaps, the U.S. navy ship fired the first shots at the North Viet- 162  M. B. HENNING and T. JOHNSON namese), but there are even more questions about whether there was actu- ally any attack from North Vietnam on American naval vessels on August 4. Tellingly, President Johnson did not inform the American public that U.S. navy ships were in the Tonkin Gulf in order to collect intelligence to sup- port raids against the North Vietnamese; rather, the president, his advisors, the U.S. military and the media all suggested that the North Vietnamese naval aggression against the United States was unprovoked and warranted retaliation. In part, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution reads as follows: The U.S. Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggres- sion .

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  The War Conspiracy

  JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War

  • Peter Dale Scott(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Skyhorse

    (Publisher)

  Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

  27 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, The Gulf of Tonkin, the 1964 Incidents, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington: GPO, 1968). Cited hereafter as Hearing.

  28 Against McNamara’s professed ignorance of any formal claim before September 1964, Goulden cites Deputy Secretary Cyrus Vance’s statement on 8 August 1964 (“I think that they do claim a 12-mile limit”), and a Navy intelligence message of May 1963. According to the New York Times (11 August 1964, p. 15) the Ticonderoga’s task force commander Rear Admiral Robert B. Moore “indicated that the destroyer… might have been 2 or 3 miles inside the 12-mile limit set by Hanoi for territorial waters.” McNamara told the committee that the Maddox could simulate an attack on the coast by turning on special transmitters, but the Pentagon later said the ship carried passive equipment and could only listen.

  29 The Pentagon Papers, as published by the New York Times(New York: Bantam, 1971), pp. 239, 306. On p. 261 the Times summary seems to imply that the State Department memo itself refers to Thai pilots, rather than Air America pilots; but this is not the case (cf. 306).

  30 For years these raids were referred to as “South Vietnamese”, but the chain of command “was entirely American” (Moïse, Tonkin Gulf, 17).

  31 Thanks to diligent research by Moïse and others, we now know that the decision overruling Herrick and Johnson came from the White House. Moïse is able to tell us that “Around noon on August 2, at the White House…the president not only confirmed the decision that sent the Maddox back into the Gulf of Tonkin…he authorized the continuation of OPLAN 34A raids….But if Michael Forrestal had not written a memo six days later to Secretary Rusk, strongly hinting that the approval of the raids had been a mistake…we would not know that OPLAN34A had been discussed at the meeting at all, or that President Johnson had any knowledge of the August 3-4 OPLAN 34A raid.” (Moïse, Tonkin Gulf,

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  Boomer Destiny

  Leading the U.S. through the Worst Crisis Since the Great Depression

  • Tom Osenton(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5 Boomer Summer: 1965 to 1984 Unfortunately, the administration chose to hang the rationale for expanding its war-making franchise in Southeast Asia on an incident which could not stand up to any kind of objective examination of the full documentation. So, as eventually happened in 1968, when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution came to be reviewed, the incident that it was based on also came under scrutiny. When the events of 4 August (1964) were revealed to have been based on very thin evidence, it con- currently demonstrated that the Johnson administration had indulged in a very selective use of information. If the administration had not lied exactly, it had not been exactly honest with the public, or, for that matter, even honest within its own deliberations. The question no longer was about the appropriateness of the reso- lution, but the basic honesty of the administration. It would cast a pall on an already distrusted Johnson presidency. —Analysis of NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok, from the NSA’s Cryptologic Quarterly, on the declassification of documents relating to the alleged August 1964 incident that sparked the U.S. escalation of the war in Vietnam. 1 The longest war in American history may have been sparked by an incident that didn’t even happen. Based on declassified National Security Agency (NSA) documents that were released in 1975, data were apparently either selectively used or fabricated altogether to support an action that had been predetermined by the administration. The timing of the alleged incident is certainly fortuitous, if not completely calculated. At the time, LBJ was seeking first-time election to the office of president, against a formidable opponent in Republican Barry Goldwater. An attack on a pair of American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, coupled by swift and decisive retaliatory action on the part of the incumbent president, might go a long way to help cinch an election that was less than 90 days away.

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  The Record of the Paper

  How the 'New York Times' Misreports US Foreign Policy

  • Howard Friel, Richard Falk(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Verso

    (Publisher)

  8

  THE VIETNAM SYNDROME:FROM THE Gulf of TonkinTO IRAQ

  At 11:37 p.m. on August 4 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced on national television that US air attacks against North Vietnam were underway in response to “open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America” in the Gulf of Tonkin. The president was referring to North Vietnamese PT-boat attacks on two American destroyers—the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy—that he said had occurred earlier that day, and to his decision to order a reprisal bombing of North Vietnam.1 Minutes later, Secretary of Defense Robert S McNamara reported that the US military reprisal was an “appropriate action in view of the unprovoked attack in international waters on United States naval vessels.”2

  The next day, August 5, the eight-column headline on the front-page of the New York Times reported:

  U.S. PLANES ATTACK NORTH VIETNAM BASES;

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  Vietnam War

  A Topical Exploration and Primary Source Collection [2 volumes]

  • James H. Willbanks(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–64, Book 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965), 930–932.

  Joint Resolution of Congress H.J. RES 1445: Tonkin Gulf Resolution, August 7, 1964 [Excerpt] Introduction

  Following the alleged second attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, the Lyndon B. Johnson administration submitted to Congress a resolution that in effect gave it full powers to wage war in Southeast Asia. Contrary to myths surrounding the resolution, its implications were fully discussed in the debate in Congress. The resolution was approved unanimously by the House of Representatives and by a vote of 88 to 2 in the Senate.

  Primary Source

  Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.

  Sec. 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace and security in southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter Of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.

  Sec. 3. This resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress.

  Source: “Text of Joint Resolution, August 7,” Department of State Bulletin 51(1313) (1964): 268.

  Robert S. McNamara Recommends Escalation, July 1, 1965 [Excerpts]

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  Rethinking the Vietnam War

  • John Dumbrell(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam. Three days after LBJ’s public announcement, and despite considerable unease in the Senate, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing the President to ‘take all necessary measures’ in response to aggression (Stone 2007: 35–42). Elements of the Gulf of Tonkin crisis remain murky, especially the degree to which the US might have deliberately provoked a North Vietnamese attack. However, even most revisionist historians accept that Johnson’s account of the crisis – both in his statements at the time and in his memoir, The Vantage Point – was a gross distortion of ascertainable fact. The US National Security Agency released 58 Rethinking the Vietnam War detailed intercept evidence in 2005 and 2006, revealing numerous errors and misunderstandings, but also clearly indicating that no naval engagement took place on 4 August. At the very least, LBJ was guilty, in his 4 August meeting with congressional leaders, and subsequent public announcements, of jumping the gun – acting with-out sure knowledge of what actually had occurred off the coast of North Vietnam. He later admitted, in connection with the Turner Joy : ‘For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there’. The text of the congressional resolution had been prepared well in advance of the August crisis, and would, in any case, have been submitted to Congress within weeks. Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was told by LBJ and George Ball on 26 July that an authorizing resolution could actually prevent irresponsible escalation, by depriving Barry Goldwater (LBJ’s Republican opponent in the 1964 presidential election) of the ability to depict the Democrats as soft on communism (Goulden 1969: 160; Moise 1996: 203; Logevall 1999: 201; NSA 2005). The attack on the Maddox almost certainly did take place.

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  Handbook of Asymmetric Warfare

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University Publications

    (Publisher)

  However, there was persistent instability in the military as several coups—not all successful—occurred in a short space of time. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ An alleged NLF activist, captured during an attack on an American outpost near the Cambodian border, is interrogated. On 2 August 1964, the USS Maddox , on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam's coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin. A second attack was reported two days later on the USS Turner Joy and Maddox in the same area. The circumstances of the attack were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ The second attack led to retaliatory air strikes, prompted Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and gave the president power to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war. In the same month, Johnson pledged that he was not ... committing American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land. An undated NSA publication declassified in 2005, however, revealed that there was no attack on 4 August. It had already been called into question long before this. Gulf of Tonkin incident, writes Louise Gerdes, is an oft-cited example of the way in which Johnson misled the American people to gain support for his foreign policy in Vietnam. George C. Herring argues, however, that McNamara and the Pentagon did not knowingly lie about the alleged attacks, but they were obviously in a mood to retaliate and they seem to have selected from the evidence available to them those parts that confirmed what they wanted to believe.

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  Vietnam

  An American Ordeal

  • George Donelson Moss(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  31

  Three years after the United States had gone to war in Vietnam, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee conducted a full-scale investigation of the Gulf of Tonkin incidents. Several of its members challenged the validity of the August 4 attack. McNamara, testifying before the committee, insisted that the NSA intercepts proved that the attack in question had taken place.

  Years later, James B. Stockdale further undermined McNamara’s credibility concerning the Gulf of Tonkin incidents. On August 2, 1964, Commander Stockdale was the flight leader of the aircraft that had driven off the patrol boats attacking the Maddox. On August 4, when the second attack was supposed to have occurred, Stockdale also led the flight that provided supporting cover for the two destroyers that dark and stormy night out in the Gulf of Tonkin. Stockdale has written an account of the events of that controversial night in the Gulf of Tonkin:

  I had the best seat in the house from which to detect boats—if there were any. I didn’t have to look through surface haze and spray like the destroyers did and yet I could see the destroyers’ every move vividly. Time and time again I flew over the Maddox and the Joy, throttled back, lights out, like a near-silent stalking owl, conserving fuel at a 250-knot loiter speed. (When the destroyers were convinced that they had some battle action going, I zigged and zagged and fired where they fired.) The edges of the black hole I was flying in were still periodically lit by flashes of lightning—but no wakes or dark shapes other than those of the destroyers were ever visible to me.32

  On August 5, 1964, Stockdale led one of the raids against North Vietnam retaliating for the attack that he doubted had occurred. Five days later, Stockdale was visited by two of McNamara’s assistants who asked him if there had been any boats attacking the destroyers the night of August 4. He told them that he never saw any. President Johnson voiced his doubts that a second attack had occurred a few days after ordering the retaliatory raids when he told George Ball, “Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.”33

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