Lyndon Johnson and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution Essay -- History Histori

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... ...Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf Incident, â€Å"Naval History, August 1999,† Annapolis MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 2002, (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, (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.