Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

America’s involvement in Vietnam goes back to World War II when it was still a French colony. After World War II, Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel with the Geneva Accords into the Communist North and Democratic South. The proxy war in Vietnam occurred in the Turbulent Sixties, after the Eisenhower years which the death of Stalin occurred. John F Kennedy was assassinated; with instability in the nation, Lyndon Johnson was installed as president. The Vietnam War, which occurred in the period

to be more negative situations and opinions that overpowered the good. Opposition grew as the result of; the Gulf of Tonkin, the John Kerry testimony and the Tet Offensive. These aspects along with many others allow many to come to the conclusion that the war was fatalistic thing. On August 2,1964 a United states ship was attacked by a North Vietnamese patrol boat in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Vietnamese ship had blankley opened fire against the United States which prompted Lyndon B. Johnson to ask

was declared a war; President Johnson never asked for a declaration of war. It was called the Vietnamese Conflict. He instead only asked for a resolution that would give him the authority to take "all necessary measures to repel any armed attack" against U.S. forces and "to prevent further aggression" (Dougherty). So, with this kind of all-powerful resolution, was there even a necessity for declaring war? Some believe there was a necessity, and that there should have been a declaration of war; others

The U.S. involvement in Vietnam was a failure and should not have been a war the US fought. The United States main objective was to stop communism within Vietnam, considering that Vietnam is still a communist country shows that the involvement did not help to stop communism in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was not only a disaster in Vietnam, the United States was getting a lot of backlash from its citizens. The US was split with pro-war and anti-war opinions that created a lot of protest amongst the citizens

as a key turning point because it shook USA’s confidence in winning the war, both sides changed their tactics and also because it led to a decrease of support for the war in the USA. However there were many other key turning points such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the attack at Pleiku and the Battle of Ac Bac. Overall the Tet Offensive could be described as a key turning point compared with the others. The Tet Offensive could be described as a key turning point because it made the USA become

“North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” I bet you can guess that whoever said this quote was very anti-war. That person is Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh president of the United States. Nixon was the president who ended the war, but which president had beliefs that war was necessary? Thirty-sixth president of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson was the accused main blame for starting the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was probably the most controversial

was granted approval when Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The Johnson Administration believed that increasing the U.S military presence in Vietnam was the only answer, the South Vietnamese troops stayed generally ineffective. In supporting South Vietnamese raids and applying a U.S program for the Lao border to disturb supply lines, U.S military started supporting South Vietnamese raids of the North Vietnamese coast. In the Gulf of Tonkin two destroyers by the name of the Maddox and

Another issue that Johnson was involved in during his presidency was the Vietnam War. This took up most of his presidency and was the reason he did not run for the second term. The decisions he made in this war were not entirely wrong but just ruined his reputation entirely. He was ridiculed by the American people for the way he handled this war. However, the real question is, was he even trying to win it? Every time we started to get ahead in the war, he would change the rules. When he first was

The Vietnam War is in no doubt, one of the most controversial conflicts that the United States has been involved in. “The fear of Communism sparked the United States to take major foreign initiatives after World War II” (Document 6). As stated previously in that quote, the Vietnam War as well as many other conflicts of the Cold War era all stemmed from one thing: the United State’s perhaps “irrational” fear of Communism. This paper will discuss the legality of the Vietnam war through moral and legal

appeared to be that Johnson would be careful about getting involved in a conflict like Vietnam. Being careful to say the least was not the case at all. There was not much serious thought in escalating the Vietnam War until the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred. In the Gulf of Tonkin it was reported “that two American destroyers had been attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats on August 4, 1964,” (Friedman 293). Shortly after these incidents, “Johnson immediately escalated the war by ordering airstrikes on