Gulf of Tonkin Resolution August 1964

Congress Votes to Give President Johnson a Blank Check to Wage War

Apr 9, 2009

Alleged attacks on two American destroyers by North Vietnamese patrol boats gave the Johnson Administration an excuse to request passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

This August marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and overwhelmingly in the Senate with only two dissenting votes. The Resolution authorized President Lyndon Johnson “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack…and to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force…” The Resolution was repealed in 1970, yet thousands of Americans had already died in the jungles of Vietnam in America’s longest but undeclared war.

The United States had been involved in Vietnam since the end of World War II, directly supporting French attempts to restore colonial rule. With the fall of Dienbienphu in 1954, Vietnam was divided, much like Korea, leaving Ho Chi Minh, a Communist, in control of the north. South Vietnam, initially, went through several leaders until Ngo Diem consolidated power, receiving substantial on-going assistance from the United States.

By the time Johnson assumed the presidency upon the death of John F. Kennedy, Diem, who had grown increasingly paranoid and hostile, had himself been assassinated, replaced by a pro-American military dictatorship. 1964 was an election year which would pit Johnson against the arch Cold Warrior Barry Goldwater. Johnson and the Democrats needed to neutralize Goldwater by appearing strong against the Communist threat in Vietnam.

Unknown to Americans and the Congress, the Pentagon, in concert with the CIA, had launched “OPLAN34A,” a top secret operation designed to provide covert intelligence assistance to South Vietnamese forces clandestinely attacking Northern Vietnamese posts across the border divide. The presence to the Maddox and the C Turner Joy within North Vietnamese territorial waters was quite deliberate.

The Resolution passed by Congress had been prepared as early as May under the guidance of McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor. The alleged attacks on the two American destroyers in the summer of 1964 gave the President and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara the leverage they needed to prod Congress into passing what amounted to a “blank check” to conduct war in Southeast Asia.

Discussion of the Resolution was confined to a secret session of the combined Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Armed Services Committee, chaired by J. William Fulbright. Senator Wayne Morse, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, voiced strong protests and demanded hearings on the measure. His lengthy speech produced over six hours of debate but never altered the inevitable outcome. Only Senator Gaylord Nelson developed misgivings, offering an amendment that would keep the American role as that of strictly advising. Fulbright influenced Nelson to drop the amendment.

Political Science Professor Mason Drukman, in his biography of Morse, writes that “along with Ernest Gruening of Alaska, Morse saw what other senators could not or would not see: that giving the president carte blanche to commit American military might to Vietnam was dangerous in the extreme as well as unconstitutional.” But few listened to Morse, considered a maverick. On a Pentagon insider tip, Morse questioned the veracity of McNamara’s claims that enemy patrol boats had indeed attacked US ships in “open seas,” as Johnson had reported to the American people.

Without further debate, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the Congress, having spent all of two days debating the measure. It showed the American people that President Johnson had the confidence of the Congress; his immediate poll numbers rose from 42 to 72% (Harris Poll). According to University of Kentucky’s George Herring, “…Johnson would pay a heavy price for his easy victory.”

Having handily defeated Barry Goldwater, Johnson began deploying over 200,000 troops to South Vietnam in 1965 and initiating saturation bombing of the north. By the end of the war, 55,000 Americans had been killed as well as hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. And Americans finally came to realize, particularly after McNamara’s 1995 admission that they had been lied to.

Mason Drukman, Wayne Morse: A Political Biography (The Oregon Historical Society Press, 1997).

George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950-1975 2nd Ed. (Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).

The copyright of the article Gulf of Tonkin Resolution August 1964 in Modern US History is owned by Michael Streich. Permission to republish Gulf of Tonkin Resolution August 1964 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.