He structured the bombing of four North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases and an oil storage warehouse that had been considered three months beforehand (Gulf of Tonkin, n.d.).
President Johnson then went on television and told the American people that recurring actions of aggression against the military of the United States must be met not only with attentive resistance, but with an affirmative response. The Congress accepted Johnson's choices to bomb North Vietnam and passed what has become recognized as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. It passed in the Senate by 88 votes to 2 and in the House of Representatives by 416 to 0. This declaration sanctioned the President to take all essential actions against Vietnam and the NLF. Johnson's conviction that the intimidation raid on North Vietnam in August, 1964, would influence Ho Chi Minh to cut off all assistance to the NLF was unsubstantiated. In the time before the November election, the NLF carried out a sequence of assaults and only two days prior to the election, the U.S. air base in the vicinity of Saigon was shelled and four Americans died (Gulf of Tonkin, n.d.).
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a key turning point in United States military participation in Vietnam. Because of President Johnson's declarations, the United States Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This declaration sanctioned Johnson to strike back for the alleged assaults in the Gulf of Tonkin....
Tonkin Resolution Turning Point: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 The Vietnam War was one of the saddest conflicts in United States history. Just before the developments that led to this conflict, the Korean War had been unsuccessfully concluded, at least in the minds many, because the two major players in the battle were not willing to engage the other (China and the U.S.). Vietnam was another "line on the sand"
" Morse makes the compelling argument that the President has no Constitutional power to act in this fashion and should not be granted a resolution to that effect, which effectively sidesteps the Constitution and its checks and balances system. Interestingly, supporters of the resolution seemed unfazed by this realization. Senator Cooper's back-and-forth with Senators Russell and Fulbright demonstrates this. He continued to probe the nature of the powers the resolution would
Tonkin Gulf Crisis The Debate over the Tonkin Gulf Crisis The Tonkin Gulf Crisis 1964 ranks with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as events that David Kaiser of the U.S. Naval War College refers to as "controversies in American political history that dwarf all others (Ford, 1997)." There is evidence that President Lyndon Johnson deliberately lied about the incidents leading to the Vietnam War
Vietnam and 20th Century History Turning Point in the History of the Vietnam War American indirect involvement in the Vietnam affairs began under the Administration of Harry Truman. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy took a more direct role, politically and economically supporting the provisional South Vietnamese regime and sending American Special Forces as well as CIA agents to Vietnam. It was Lyndon Johnson who turned American involvement into a full-scale war. To understand
USS Maddox On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. A few days later, another American ship, the U.S.S. Turner Joy, was also attacked. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed in response to the aggression, authorizing the President to take "all necessary steps, including the use of armed force," to protect American interests ("Gulf of Tonkin Incident," n.d.). The attack marked a
Vietnam War How was the war similar or different to previous U.S. attempts at "containment"? What were the key mistakes the U.S. made, in your view? What where the key turning points of U.S. involvement? Why did the U.S. lose the war? How was the war similar or different to previous U.S. attempts at "containment"? The policy or strategy if the U.S. of 'containment' originated during the formative years of te cold war and it aimed
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now