Tonkin Resolution: U.S. Enters the Vietnam War

Congress handed a president the power to wage war without ever declaring one. On August 7, 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the Senate 88-2 and the House 416-0, authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to take "all necessary measures" to repel armed attacks against U.S. forces in Southeast Asia. The resolution became the legal foundation for America's massive escalation in Vietnam, a conflict that would ultimately kill over 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese. The triggering incidents were murky from the start. On August 2, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin while the destroyer was conducting intelligence operations off the North Vietnamese coast. A second attack was reported on August 4, but doubts emerged almost immediately. Sonar operators on the Maddox reported torpedo tracks that likely were not there. Captain John Herrick sent a message suggesting the reported contacts were false and urging "complete evaluation before any further action." Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes anyway and went to Congress the next morning. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara presented the incidents as unprovoked aggression against American vessels in international waters. They did not disclose that the Maddox had been supporting South Vietnamese covert operations against North Vietnam, operations that gave Hanoi reason to view the destroyer as a hostile combatant rather than an innocent presence. Senators Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening cast the only dissenting votes, warning that the resolution amounted to a blank check for war. That is exactly what it became. Johnson used the resolution to justify deploying ground combat troops to Vietnam in March 1965 and steadily escalating the conflict over the next three years. By 1968, over 500,000 American troops were in Vietnam. The resolution was repealed in 1971, but by then the war had already fractured American society, ended Johnson's presidency, and established a template for executive war-making that persists to this day.