"The Truth About Tonkin" Topic
12 Posts
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Tango01 | 29 Jul 2020 3:21 p.m. PST |
"On 2 August 1964, North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox (DD-731) while the destroyer was in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. There is no doubting that fact. But what happened in the Gulf during the late hours of 4 August—and the consequential actions taken by U.S. officials in Washington—has been seemingly cloaked in confusion and mystery ever since that night. Nearly 200 documents the National Security Agency (NSA) declassified and released in 2005 and 2006, however, have helped shed light on what transpired in the Gulf of Tonkin on 4 August. The papers, more than 140 of them classified top secret, include phone transcripts, oral-history interviews, signals intelligence (SIGINT) messages, and chronologies of the Tonkin events developed by Department of Defense and NSA officials. Combined with recently declassified tapes of phone calls from White House officials involved with the events and previously uncovered facts about Tonkin, these documents provide compelling evidence about the subsequent decisions that led to the full commitment of U.S. armed forces to the Vietnam War…" Main page link Amicalement Armand
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jurgenation | 29 Jul 2020 6:41 p.m. PST |
Doesn;t matter..it;s over ,we would have found some other excuse to go in. Ugly war Veterans treated poorly,and Jane fonda never apologsized..Yes I;m still bitter. |
Skarper | 30 Jul 2020 2:00 a.m. PST |
Agree the US would have found a pretext to invade South Vietnam at some point. They were already waging a secret war against the North and 'advising' the South. |
Legion 4 | 30 Jul 2020 9:08 a.m. PST |
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Pyrate Captain | 31 Jul 2020 8:37 a.m. PST |
Having been invited, I'm hard pressed to think of it as an invasion. |
Tango01 | 31 Jul 2020 12:54 p.m. PST |
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Wolfhag | 31 Jul 2020 1:32 p.m. PST |
The US did not "invade" S. Vietnam. You don't invade a country that you had been giving assistance to and have the treaty to protect for over 20 years and they welcome you aboard. Why did the U.S. go to war in Vietnam? This is a question historians continue to debate. One of the main reasons it remains a source of argument is that it is difficult to say when the U.S. war actually began. Should we trace it back to the 1940s when President Harry Truman authorized U.S. financial support of the French war in Indochina? Did it begin in the 1950s when the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam in two and President Dwight Eisenhower offered U.S. aid to help establish a non-communist nation in the southern half to counter the communist north? Eisenhower's "domino theory," the idea that if one country in Southeast Asia fell to the communists, the entire region would fall, and the ripple effects would be felt throughout the Asia-Pacific world, informed not only his thinking about U.S. relations with the region but the policymaking of his successors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Kennedy asserted that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden" to support democratic nation-building as a way to counter communist advances in Asia. During Johnson's presidency, the U.S. escalated its war in Vietnam, starting with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in which Congress authorized Johnson to use military force without declaring war. In March 1965, U.S. Marines landed at Danang. SEATO Alliance: The states newly formed from French Indochina (North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) were prevented from taking part in any international military alliance as a result of the Geneva Agreements signed 20 July of the same year concluding the end of the First Indochina War. However, with the lingering threat coming from communist North Vietnam and the possibility of the domino theory with Indochina turning into a communist frontier, SEATO got these countries under its protection – an act that would be considered to be one of the main justifications for the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. It appears the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a way for Congress to relieve themselves of the responsibility of going to war and put that on the President (a CYA act?). However, they were not shy on spending $$$, something they excel at. They could have pulled back funding at any time. Just like they did when NVN invaded in 1975 and we still had the treaty to protect them. More reading: link Wolfhag |
Skarper | 31 Jul 2020 2:34 p.m. PST |
Tomayto tomahto. Invitation invasion. Thought experiment for those willing to think outside the box a little. Say another major power acts in a similar way – would it be an invasion? E.g. Soviets in Afghanistan. The parallels are striking actually. |
Wolfhag | 31 Jul 2020 5:36 p.m. PST |
Skarper, So what would you rather have, a home invasion by a stranger or a friend show up from an invitation you sent. That's OK, no need to answer it. The Soviets, US, and their allies were engaged in a Cold War sometimes using proxies. Both sides used assassination, subversion, and foreign aid to bribe corrupt dictators. When the US sent troops into a country they were not met with Molotov Cocktails. Unlike the Hungarian Revolution and Invasion of Czechoslovakia that the Brezhnev Doctrine at work again. The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet foreign policy that proclaimed any threat to socialist rule in any state of the Soviet bloc in Central and Eastern Europe was a threat to them all, and therefore justified the intervention of fellow socialist states (their allies). That included embracing capitalism and personal liberties the Soviets thought they could do without. Nyet! The doctrine was proclaimed in order to justify the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia earlier in 1968, with the overthrow of the reform government there and the Hungarian Revolution. The US and its allies had a similar policy. Diem didn't deserve what happened to him and what the West had to do in Indonesia was pretty cruel but it worked. I think the Soviets overthrew more governments with their military, the CIA used a different method. I don't think neither country can claim the moral high ground. Sad for the people caught in the middle. If the US and it's allied did not come to the aid of SVN it would have been a huge Cold War victory for the Soviets and showed to the allies of the West they could not depend on their aid when the Commies came for them. I just wish the US had handled it differently. Maybe the good people of Vietnam will soon throw off the yoke of Communism. They seem to be doing pretty well as Capitalists in Saigon and California. During the Cold War, I worked at one of those three-letter agencies in the DC area. I'm more familiar than most people about it. Wolfhag |
Legion 4 | 31 Jul 2020 6:14 p.m. PST |
Wolf +1 |
Skarper | 31 Jul 2020 10:41 p.m. PST |
You're certainly entitled to your opinion Wolfhag. I'm not going to argue point by point. I still hold the US misadventure in South East Asia to have been an invasion. Your posts from what I can understand does not really deal with the invitation/invasion question at all. It seems to argue that is was necessary. Like you say – The Cold War was a dirty business. |
Legion 4 | 01 Aug 2020 8:34 a.m. PST |
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