The Gulf of Tonkin episode and the misuse of power
That and other cases raise fears about how a future US president may use military muscle
Harish mehta 19 August 2014
The 50th anniversary of the contentious Gulf of Tonkin incident this month draws attention to American presidents who have acted imperiously in waging war abroad without justification.
The administration of US President Lyndon Johnson was looking for an excuse to massively escalate US military action in Vietnam in 1964. Historians believe that LBJ deliberately provoked Hanoi by sending US navy ships on electronic spying missions into North Vietnam, known as De Soto patrols, as well as carrying out OPLAN (Operations Plan) 34-A, a series of commando raids starting in January 1964 against selected targets in North Vietnam.
The excuse to escalate that the LBJ administration badly wanted was manufactured soon afterwards. The administration claimed that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked US ships on Aug 4, 1964.
At the time, LBJ’s version was taken to be true. But with the declassification of US documents in 2005 and 2006, it became clear that the North Vietnamese had attacked US destroyer Maddox only once on Aug 2 in international waters close to the Vietnamese coast, and only because they had been provoked repeatedly.
The LBJ administration claimed that US ships had again come under attack on Aug 4, but new historical evidence shows their claim to be false. The North Vietnamese did not attack US naval ships Turner Joy and Maddox on Aug 4. That night, the South Vietnamese, who were allied to the Americans, staged more OPLAN raids into North Vietnam.
Here is why the Gulf of Tonkin episode is important in understanding US foreign interventions. New historical evidence tells us that the Johnson administration was determined to find any pretext to destroy North Vietnam.
A key member of President Johnson’s staff, Undersecretary of State George Ball, revealed in a BBC interview: “At the time, there’s no question that many of the people who were associated with the war saw the necessity of bombing as the only instrument that might be persuasive on the North Vietnamese, and therefore were looking for any excuse to initiate bombing ... the De Soto patrols, the sending of a destroyer up the Tonkin Gulf, was primarily for provocation ... that if the destroyer got into some trouble, that would provide the provocation we needed.”
US Navy Lieutenant-Commander Pat Paterson argues that the new evidence makes clear that “high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about events that led to full US involvement in the Vietnam War”.
Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara claimed that the North Vietnamese had indeed attacked US ships on Aug 4, and President Johnson appeared on television and announced plans to retaliate against North Vietnamese targets.
From here on, LBJ began escalating. US Navy Commander James Stockdale was ordered to launch an air strike against North Vietnamese targets for their “attacks” of August 4. Commander Stockdale commented: “We were about to launch a war under false pretences, in the face of the on-scene military commander’s advice to the contrary.”
LBJ used the North Vietnamese “attack” to win US Congressional approval for funds to pay for the expanding US military role in the conflict. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed on Aug 7, 1964 with near-total majority, giving the president power to conduct military operations in South-east Asia without declaring war.
President Johnson no longer required Congress to approve military action, thereby eliminating the system of checks and balances enshrined in the US Constitution. Subsequently, LBJ took the nation into the longest and the most expensive conflict in US history.
So delighted was LBJ by the resolution passing both Houses of Congress that he famously remarked that the resolution “was like Grandma’s nightshirt; it covers everything”.
By 1967, critics of the Vietnam War began questioning the “blank cheque” that President Johnson had been given via the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the American people began agitating to repeal the resolution.
A Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation found that the Maddox had been on an electronic spying mission off the North Vietnamese coast.
Moreover, the Senate learned that the US Naval Communication Centre in the Philippines had questioned whether any second attack on US ships had actually occurred on Aug 4. So, in 1971 Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
That did not prevent misuse of presidential power. President Richard Nixon launched secret bombings of Cambodia in 1969 and 1970, expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia without telling Congress about it.
War Powers Resolution
Believing that the president had amassed too much power, Congress created the War Powers Resolution which passed both houses of Congress and became law in November 1973, despite Mr Nixon’s veto.
The War Powers Resolution, which is still in force, requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action, and prohibits US armed forces from remaining deployed for more than 60 days, without Congressional approval of the use of military force.
In January 2014, Senators John McCain (Republican) and Tim Kaine (Democrat) introduced new legislation to repeal and replace the existing War Powers Resolution with a new law because the nature of warfare has changed.
The new law aims to forge much closer consultation between the president and Congress before sending US military forces into a war or armed conflict.
The proposed law calls for creating a permanent Joint Congressional Consultation Committee in Congress that would periodically meet the president, and have access to matters of national security.
In the long history of US foreign interventions since the beginning of the 20th century, the Gulf of Tonkin incident has become a precedent in at least another false testimony, the one given by the administration of President George W Bush in order to invade Iraq in 2003.
The US fared badly at the end of both wars. It lost the war in Vietnam, and although it succeeded in overthrowing the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Iraq plunged into civil war after US military withdrawal.
The Bush administration misled the Senate as well as the United Nations with a series of false testimonies about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, which had never existed, and were never found by the US military following the invasion.
Consequently, the US Senate gave the Bush administration legal sanction for the US military to invade Iraq following a vote in the Senate, which approved a Joint Resolution with the support of large bipartisan majorities in October 2002.
US intelligence officials, think-tanks, and media have found that senior Bush administration officials lied and manipulated evidence in order to implement their agenda to remove Saddam from power.
President Johnson’s manipulation of the Gulf of Tonkin incident to substantially increase US military deployment to destroy the state of North Vietnam, President Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia, and President Bush’s exploitation of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction in order to invade Iraq - all based on concocted grounds - raise deep concerns about how a future US president may use military power.
A new War Powers Resolution must, therefore, ensure that presidential powers are properly checked and balanced by Congress, and that the core values of American democracy are respected.
The writer, a former BT senior correspondent, is a historian who has taught at Canadian universities
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The Gulf of Tonkin episode and the misuse of power
That and other cases raise fears about how a future US president may use military muscle
Harish mehta
19 August 2014
The 50th anniversary of the contentious Gulf of Tonkin incident this month draws attention to American presidents who have acted imperiously in waging war abroad without justification.
The administration of US President Lyndon Johnson was looking for an excuse to massively escalate US military action in Vietnam in 1964. Historians believe that LBJ deliberately provoked Hanoi by sending US navy ships on electronic spying missions into North Vietnam, known as De Soto patrols, as well as carrying out OPLAN (Operations Plan) 34-A, a series of commando raids starting in January 1964 against selected targets in North Vietnam.
The excuse to escalate that the LBJ administration badly wanted was manufactured soon afterwards. The administration claimed that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked US ships on Aug 4, 1964.
At the time, LBJ’s version was taken to be true. But with the declassification of US documents in 2005 and 2006, it became clear that the North Vietnamese had attacked US destroyer Maddox only once on Aug 2 in international waters close to the Vietnamese coast, and only because they had been provoked repeatedly.
The LBJ administration claimed that US ships had again come under attack on Aug 4, but new historical evidence shows their claim to be false. The North Vietnamese did not attack US naval ships Turner Joy and Maddox on Aug 4. That night, the South Vietnamese, who were allied to the Americans, staged more OPLAN raids into North Vietnam.
Here is why the Gulf of Tonkin episode is important in understanding US foreign interventions. New historical evidence tells us that the Johnson administration was determined to find any pretext to destroy North Vietnam.
A key member of President Johnson’s staff, Undersecretary of State George Ball, revealed in a BBC interview: “At the time, there’s no question that many of the people who were associated with the war saw the necessity of bombing as the only instrument that might be persuasive on the North Vietnamese, and therefore were looking for any excuse to initiate bombing ... the De Soto patrols, the sending of a destroyer up the Tonkin Gulf, was primarily for provocation ... that if the destroyer got into some trouble, that would provide the provocation we needed.”
US Navy Lieutenant-Commander Pat Paterson argues that the new evidence makes clear that “high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about events that led to full US involvement in the Vietnam War”.
Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara claimed that the North Vietnamese had indeed attacked US ships on Aug 4, and President Johnson appeared on television and announced plans to retaliate against North Vietnamese targets.
From here on, LBJ began escalating. US Navy Commander James Stockdale was ordered to launch an air strike against North Vietnamese targets for their “attacks” of August 4. Commander Stockdale commented: “We were about to launch a war under false pretences, in the face of the on-scene military commander’s advice to the contrary.”
LBJ used the North Vietnamese “attack” to win US Congressional approval for funds to pay for the expanding US military role in the conflict. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed on Aug 7, 1964 with near-total majority, giving the president power to conduct military operations in South-east Asia without declaring war.
President Johnson no longer required Congress to approve military action, thereby eliminating the system of checks and balances enshrined in the US Constitution. Subsequently, LBJ took the nation into the longest and the most expensive conflict in US history.
So delighted was LBJ by the resolution passing both Houses of Congress that he famously remarked that the resolution “was like Grandma’s nightshirt; it covers everything”.
By 1967, critics of the Vietnam War began questioning the “blank cheque” that President Johnson had been given via the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the American people began agitating to repeal the resolution.
A Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation found that the Maddox had been on an electronic spying mission off the North Vietnamese coast.
Moreover, the Senate learned that the US Naval Communication Centre in the Philippines had questioned whether any second attack on US ships had actually occurred on Aug 4. So, in 1971 Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
That did not prevent misuse of presidential power. President Richard Nixon launched secret bombings of Cambodia in 1969 and 1970, expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia without telling Congress about it.
War Powers Resolution
Believing that the president had amassed too much power, Congress created the War Powers Resolution which passed both houses of Congress and became law in November 1973, despite Mr Nixon’s veto.
The War Powers Resolution, which is still in force, requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action, and prohibits US armed forces from remaining deployed for more than 60 days, without Congressional approval of the use of military force.
In January 2014, Senators John McCain (Republican) and Tim Kaine (Democrat) introduced new legislation to repeal and replace the existing War Powers Resolution with a new law because the nature of warfare has changed.
The new law aims to forge much closer consultation between the president and Congress before sending US military forces into a war or armed conflict.
The proposed law calls for creating a permanent Joint Congressional Consultation Committee in Congress that would periodically meet the president, and have access to matters of national security.
In the long history of US foreign interventions since the beginning of the 20th century, the Gulf of Tonkin incident has become a precedent in at least another false testimony, the one given by the administration of President George W Bush in order to invade Iraq in 2003.
The US fared badly at the end of both wars. It lost the war in Vietnam, and although it succeeded in overthrowing the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Iraq plunged into civil war after US military withdrawal.
The Bush administration misled the Senate as well as the United Nations with a series of false testimonies about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, which had never existed, and were never found by the US military following the invasion.
Consequently, the US Senate gave the Bush administration legal sanction for the US military to invade Iraq following a vote in the Senate, which approved a Joint Resolution with the support of large bipartisan majorities in October 2002.
US intelligence officials, think-tanks, and media have found that senior Bush administration officials lied and manipulated evidence in order to implement their agenda to remove Saddam from power.
President Johnson’s manipulation of the Gulf of Tonkin incident to substantially increase US military deployment to destroy the state of North Vietnam, President Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia, and President Bush’s exploitation of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction in order to invade Iraq - all based on concocted grounds - raise deep concerns about how a future US president may use military power.
A new War Powers Resolution must, therefore, ensure that presidential powers are properly checked and balanced by Congress, and that the core values of American democracy are respected.
The writer, a former BT senior correspondent, is a historian who has taught at Canadian universities
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