Lyndon Baines Johnson: Remarks on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The most fateful action of Lyndon Johnson's presidency was his decision to expand American military involvement in South Vietnam. Previous presidents had sent aid to the region, but Johnson presided over a massive buildup that dwarfed earlier efforts. President Dwight Eisenhower had provided material support for the French in their war against the Viet Minh, a Vietnamese national liberation movement initially formed to seek independence from France. In 1954 the French negotiated peace accords, which divided the land into North Vietnam (with a Communist government) and South Vietnam until unifying elections could take place. The United States backed the newly formed government of South Vietnam. Unifying elections never took place. By the late 1950s a South Vietnamese Communist insurgency, the Vietcong, had actively begun to fight a guerrilla war. President John F. Kennedy dispatched U.S. military advisers to prop up the weak South Vietnamese army, but only sixteen thousand American troops were on the ground in South Vietnam at the time of his assassination. The growing strength of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese army and the continued poor performance of the South Vietnamese army added pressure on Johnson to send more U.S. forces.

On August 2, 1964, the U.S. destroyer Maddox, patrolling sixteen miles off the coast of North Vietnam, was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The American vessel suffered only minor damage and no injuries to its personnel. In the early morning hours of August 4, the Maddox and a sister ship, the Turner Joy, reported a second attack. American forces fired at what they believed to be North Vietnamese torpedo boats, although none were actually sighted. Later that day the commander of the Maddox sent word that the indications of an attack might have been triggered by freak weather effects or misreadings by overeager sonar men.

The president and his advisers conferred over the best course of action. In addition to military and foreign policy considerations, Johnson weighed the consequences of inaction on his upcoming presidential election campaign. Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee, was calling for a more aggressive response to the Communist threat in South Vietnam; Johnson did not want to be seen as a weak leader. He ordered no retaliation for the initial attack, but the second incident, despite its dubious credibility, was treated as a deliberate provocation. Johnson dispatched air strikes against North Vietnamese targets and met with congressional leaders to seek their support for a resolution he would soon submit to them.

At 11:36 pm on August 4, a grave Johnson went before a national television audience to announce his response to the incident. He begins by briefly describing “hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin.” Making no mention of the uncertain military intelligence, he depicts the second incident as involving “a number of hostile vessels attacking two U.S. destroyers with torpedoes.” After outlining the immediate military response, Johnson characterizes the U.S. role in Southeast Asia as protecting the “peaceful villagers of South Viet Nam” against a campaign of “aggression by terror” being waged by the Vietcong and their North Vietnamese allies. He says nothing about the provocative actions of the American ships prior to the incident. Despite the belligerent actions of the North Vietnamese, Johnson assures his listeners that the American response will be “limited and fitting.” Using a phrase he will repeat many times in coming months, the commander in chief tells the nation, “We still seek no wider war.”

But authority to wage a wider war is exactly what Johnson was requesting. He announces that he will send a resolution to Congress expressing American “determination to take all necessary measures” to defend the government of South Vietnam. Johnson was convinced that there would be little opposition to this move, and he was correct. On August 7, after perfunctory hearings and minimal debate, the House passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution unanimously. In the Senate, there were only two dissenting votes. With this vote congressional leaders gave Johnson a blank check to use in pursuing his goals in Vietnam. A few months after his November landslide election victory, Johnson sent the first U.S. combat troops to Vietnam. When 3,500 Marines waded ashore at Da Nang in March 1965 the wider war that Johnson had pledged to avoid became a reality. By 1969 more than half a million American military personnel were fighting in Vietnam. Critics of the war pointed to Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin speech as a key example of the presidential deception that led the United States into this costly and divisive Southeast Asian quagmire.