This week (Aug. 2) in 1964 a North Vietnamese torpedo boat attacked an American destroyer, the USS Maddox, in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam. Two days later, a second attack on the Maddux, and the USS C. Turner Joy, was reported, but it would turn out to be false—the result of “freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonar men,” as the captain of the Maddux later admitted.
False or not, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as it became known, led to passage by Congress of a joint resolution, the Southeast Asia Resolution, that gave then-President Lyndon Johnson the authority to order military operations against “communist aggression” anywhere in Southeast Asia—North Vietnam in particular—without having to ask for a formal declaration of war. Today, most people believe that Johnson deliberately used the Gulf of Tonkin incident, both the real and phantom versions, to escalate into an all-out war what had been merely a simmering conflict between America and North Vietnam over the fate of America’s ally, South Vietnam. Certainly the conflict did escalate into a war that lasted more than a decade and resulted in the deaths of more than 58,000 American servicemen.
That said, it is a stretch to say that President Johnson manipulated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to intensify the conflict. In 1964, Johnson’s primary concern was his domestic agenda, labeled “The Great Society” program, in which he planned to use the federal government to wage what he considered a far more important war—the war on poverty. The last thing Johnson wanted was for public attention, let alone federal funds, to be directed anywhere else, especially the jungles of Vietnam.