Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (officially, the Southeast Asia Resolution, Public Law 88-408) was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to a sea battle between the North Vietnamese Navy's Torpedo Squadron 135 (Moise 1996, p. 78) and the destroyer USS Maddox on August 2 and an alleged second naval engagement between North Vietnamese boats and the U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy on August 4 in the Tonkin Gulf; both naval actions are known collectively as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The attack was provoked from the HF net orders to the Admiral's bridge taken by AR Krohnert USN 686 86 30 to "Lionheart" the USS Topeka CLG-8 to pass on to the destroyers of the task force orders to make increasingly closer 20 mile sweeps into the gulf until hostile engagement was experienced, then to leave and await congress to declare war. It is of historical significance because it gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of "conventional'' military force in Southeast Asia. Specifically, the resolution authorized the President to do whatever necessary in order to assist "any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty". This included involving armed forces. The unanimous affirmative vote in the House of Representatives was 416–0. (However, Congressman Eugene Siler of Kentucky, who was not present but opposed the measure, was "paired" with another member who favored the resolution—i.e., his opposition was not counted, but the vote in favor was one less than it would have been.) (Beito & Beito 2006) It was opposed in the Senate only by Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK). Senator Gruening objected to "sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated". (Tonkin Gulf debate 1964) The Johnson administration subsequently relied upon the resolution to begin its rapid escalation of U.S. military involvement in South Vietnam and open warfare between North Vietnam and the United States. (NYT 1970) Of some potential relevance, a few weeks earlier, on July 16, 1964, in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, the Republican nominee Barry Goldwater had put forth as a theme of his campaign the charge that Johnson was "soft on communism", a charge that became more difficult to sustain after the resolution.