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The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

It is fitting to reflect on an event that has a lot of history entwined around it on this 40th

anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf incident, a turning point in American policy toward a full-scale

war in Vietnam. In August 1964, the incident served as a pretext for President Lyndon B.

Johnson's administration to ask Congress for a joint resolution supporting the use of force in

Southeast Asia, which it later used as the basis for an all-out war. The incident paved the way for

a military commitment by the United States that finally reached its pinnacle in March 1969 with

548,000 American troops deployed in South Vietnam along with additional support forces in

Thailand. In the fight, more than a million Vietnamese people as well as 59,000 Americans

perished. In this text, we shall justify the background of the war and the evident presented.

In reality, Johnson had approved a plan for clandestine naval commando attacks by the

United States against North Vietnam in January 1964, and this endeavor had been ongoing since

then. The Special National Intelligence Estimate 50-2-64, which is part of this briefing book, is a

recent addition to the declassified record. The estimate, which was released in May 1964, further

proves that the United States deliberately directed OPLAN 34-A to exert pressure on North

Vietnam, even going so far as to try to predict Hanoi's response.

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When the records are examined, it will become evident that the cables weren't reports

from the intercepting units on the Maddox and other locations summarizing the contents of the

raw intercepts but rather raw intercepts of North Vietnamese radio activity. This is significant

because it rules out the possibility that Washington and the Commander-in-Chief Pacific's

Hawaii headquarters received the infamous intercepts at the same time. Before the information

could be transferred up the chain of command, radio intelligence units had to complete three

tasks: record the intercepts themselves, decode and translate the North Vietnamese.

transmissions, and put together a message using the newly acquired information (Bjorkman).

The fact that 34-A forces conducted another strike on North Vietnam on the night of

August 3/4, as American destroyers started their run back up the Tonkin Gulf, has not been

reported thus far in relation to potential U.S. provocation. If Hanoi was reacting to the initial

raid, a follow-up attack had the same justification for acting against the bolstered Desoto Patrol.

Yet it seems Hanoi made the decision to do nothing. At a retrospective international conference

in 1997, North Vietnamese officials—including Defense Minister General VO Nguyen Giap—

explained that their August 2 response had been directed by a local naval command, not the

Hanoi leadership (Tovy). The Vietnamese claimed that no naval sortie had been launched on

July 4.

In conclusion, we are now able to view the internal discussions of the Johnson

administration with more accuracy information. The information clearly demonstrates

Washington rushing to a conclusion about the events in the Tonkin Gulf, which it seized upon as

evidence in support of its predetermined intention to escalate the conflict in Vietnam, especially

when combined with LBJ's telephone conversations with McNamara, which were recently made

available to the public with transcriptions. People had every right to doubt the accuracy of the
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Johnson administration's account of the Gulf of Tonkin event at the time. Similar to how the

Bush administration misrepresented intelligence regarding the 9/11 attacks, the government is

manipulating this international scenario for political reasons in order to get Congress to approve

the use of force.

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Works Cited

Bjorkman, Eileen A. Unforgotten in the Gulf of Tonkin: A Story of the US Military's

Commitment to Leave No One Behind. U of Nebraska Press, 2020.

https://books.google.co.ke/books?

hl=en&lr=&id=C4zvDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=The+Gulf+of+Tonkin+Inciden

t&ots=F8Ak5qlq5Z&sig=m52x7ROD8A6fCf0nZUtzisMENmU&redir_esc=y#v=onepag

e&q=The%20Gulf%20of%20Tonkin%20Incident&f=false

Tovy, Tal. The Gulf of Tonkin: The United States and the Escalation in the Vietnam War.

Routledge, 2021.