Lyndon Johnson and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution

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Lyndon Johnson and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution

The official rhetoric of Lyndon Johnson’s administration

portrayed the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an unprovoked and malicious

attack on U.S. ships by the armed forces of North Vietnam, as a

result of which the President needed the power to deal militarily

with the North Vietnamese. The Gulf of Tonkin incident explicitly

encompasses military actions on August 2, and alleged actions on

August 4, 1964, between North Vietnamese torpedo patrol boats and

United States destroyers and aircraft off the coast of North Vietnam.

President Johnson and many top administration officials declared that

the United States was innocent of any aggressive offensive maneuvers

against the North Vietnamese, and that the attack on two U.S. destroyers

was an unexpected slap in the face. In reality, however, the opposite

of the administration’s claims was true. Through a period of years,

and especially throughout the nine months prior to the incident in the

Gulf of Tonkin, there was thick and constant U.S. involvement with

the South Vietnamese, who conducted many joint offensive operations

against North Vietnam.

This paper will show just how intensely the United States was

involved in covert military action against North Vietnam in the ninemonth

period (Lyndon Johnson’s first nine months as President) leading

up to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Further, it will demonstrate that

the second alleged attack (August 4) by the North Vietnamese in the

Gulf of Tonkin never occurred, but was fictionalized by the Johnson

administration in order to ask Congress to give the President the

authority to conduct overt military operations against North Vietnam.

The idea for the Tonkin Gulf Resoluti...

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...Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf

Incident, “Naval History, August 1999,” Annapolis MD: U.S. Naval

Institute, 2002, <http://www.usni.org/navalhistory/Articles99/

NHandrade.htm> (5 December 2002).

8 The Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf Incident.

9 Gibbons, U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, 2.

10 Ibid., 3.

11 Ibid., 5, 6.

12 Ibid., 5.

13 National Security Action Memorandum No. 280, Lyndon Baines Johnson

Library and Museum-National Archives and Records Administration,

<http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/NSAMs/

nsam280.asp> (5 December 2002).

14 Ibid.

15 Gibbons, U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, 6.

16 Ibid., 6.

17 Ibid., 6. Emphasis mine.

18 George C. Herring, The Pentagon Papers-Abridged Edition (New York:

McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993), 94.

19 Gibbons, U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, 2.

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