On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese armed motor
boats attacked two U.S. naval vessels off the
coast of North Vietnam. The administration of
Lyndon Johnson defined the attacks as an
unprovoked act of North Vietnamese aggression.
Two days later it was announced that another
attack on U.S. ships in international waters had
occurred and the U.S. responded with air attacks
on North Vietnamese targets. President Johnson
then took a resolution he had already prepared to
the Congress of the United States. The so-called
Gulf of Tonkin resolution declared that the
Congress authorizes the president to do what he
deemed necessary to defend U.S. national security
in Southeast Asia. Only two Senators voted "no."
Over the next three years the U.S. sent 500,000
troops to Vietnam to carry out a massive air and
ground war in both the South and North of the
country.
Within a year of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin
incidents, evidence began to appear indicating
that the August 2 attack was provoked. The two
U.S. naval vessels were in North Vietnamese
coastal waters orchestrating acts of sabotage in
the Northern part of Vietnam. More serious,
evidence pointed to the inescapable conclusion
that the second attack on August 4 never occurred.
President Johnson's lies to the American people
about the Gulf of Tonkin contributed to the
devastating decisions to escalate a U.S. war in
Vietnam that cost 57,000 U.S. troop deaths and
upwards of three million Vietnamese deaths.
Forty years later, George W. Bush and his key
aides put together a package of lies about Iraq-
imports of uranium from Niger, purchases of
aluminum rods which supposedly could be used for
constructing nuclear weapons, development of
biological and chemical weapons, and connections
between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.
As the Vietnamese and Iraqi cases show, foreign
policies built on lies can lead to imperial wars,
huge expenditures on the military, economic crises
at home, and military casualties abroad.
The American people must insist that their leaders
tell the truth about the U.S. role in the world.
Harry Targ teaches U.S. foreign policy and
international relations at Purdue University. He
is the author or co-author of books and articles
on these subjects. He is a member of the National
Executive Committee of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.