Word: tonkin
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Remember the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which launched the Vietnam War. It passed the U.S. Senate 88 to 2. That should have been a warning...
Classmate Peter F. Hagerty also found himself in the military after graduation, on a World War ll-era destroyer heading for the Tonkin Gulf...
...said the Tonkin Gulf Crisis was a fabrication that has serious consequences. "The Tonkin Gulf crisis was one of the major reasons the Vietnam War was justified," said Bradlee...
There's some truth in that. But pundits should examine the Vietnam experience more closely. Contrary to popular belief, serious domestic opposition to that war mounted long after the fighting started (three years after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution), when our goals seemed futile and unattainable. In stark contrast to the cryptic escalation of hostilities in Vietnam, the Gulf War was preceeded by months of public debate and legitimized with formal approval from Congress. And this time the U.S. has enough firepower to achieve its goals...
...rationale for supporting the President -- oil, aggression and cynicism about sanctions -- turned into a footnote once Congress voted; what mattered was that at last proper constitutional norms had been followed. How easy it had been during Vietnam (a war mounted under the dubious fig leaf of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) to reject personal complicity in the carnage. Blame, as I do, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger for the names on the wailing wall in Washington. But today, for the first time in my life, I freely accept, as an American citizen, responsibility...