This Jesse Greenspan article is one of the most thorough and accurate accounts of how the U.S. got itself into the Vietnam War. It's not a pretty picture. It is a tale of how leaders of any nation who have lost touch with their fallibility, incapable of admitting their worst mistakes, and acting on false premises, can lead their own and other nations down destructive paths and into committing horrendous crimes. The Title is "The Gulf of Tonkin Incident ..." Most Americans view that incident as the War's genesis. But this is wrong. The genesis of American involvement* occurred when Truman decided not to send humanitarian help to a starving North Vietnam. Ho chi minh's pleas for help were ignored,** and for sinister reasons. The rest, as they say, is history. https://www.history.com/news/the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-50-years-ago After World War II, France reoccupied its former colonies in Southeast Asia, only to be kicked out again by the forces of Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. In 1954, as the conflict wound down, the world’s powers reached an agreement to temporarily divide Vietnam in two, with all Ho supporters going north and all French supporters going south. Elections were supposed to reunite the country within a couple of years, but the United States opposed them over concerns that Ho would win the presidency. Instead, it propped up the corrupt and authoritarian government of Ngo Dinh Diem. South Vietnam “was essentially the creation of the United States,” the Defense Department would later admit in the Pentagon Papers. Within a few years, a rebellion had sprung up against Diem, aided by Ho’s forces in the north, who oversaw a string of assassinations against non-Communist village leaders. Under presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States gave France—and then South Vietnam—economic aid and weapons with which to fight the Communist rebels. It also sent over more and more military advisors, some of whom participated in raids despite ostensibly being there only for self-defense. As part of one such covert operation, the United States trained and directed South Vietnamese sailors to bombard radar stations, bridges and other targets along the North Vietnamese coast. Meanwhile, U.S. warships such as the Maddox conducted electronic espionage missions in order to relay intelligence to South Vietnam. The rebels continued gaining ground, however, both before and after U.S. officials sanctioned a coup in which Diem was murdered. At this point, U.S. involvement in Vietnam remained largely in the background. But in the pre-dawn hours of July 31, 1964, U.S.-backed patrol boats shelled two North Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Tonkin, after which the Maddox headed to the area. As it cruised along on August 2, it found itself facing down three Soviet-built, North Vietnamese torpedo boats that had come out to chase it away. The Maddox fired first, issuing what the U.S. authorities described as warning shots. Undeterred, the three boats continued approaching and opened up with machine-gun and torpedo fire of their own. With the help of F-8 Crusader jets dispatched from a nearby aircraft carrier, the Maddox badly damaged at least one of the North Vietnamese boats while emerging completely unscathed, except for a single bullet that lodged in its superstructure. ... ... ... ... ...________ * It would be easy to understate the complexity of Vietnam's politics of the era. The war that both the French and then the Americans inserted themselves into was a civil war with a complicated history. **The time line in the article picks up after this occurred.
Thanks, people outside the US may need a proxy on the History.com link if getting a re-direct. I'm reminded this month is 46 years since the very near death of Robert McNamara when a guy almost managed to push him off the Martha's Vineyard ferry. I always figured it was strange the opportunistic assassin (a young local artist) never got charged. I think McNamara knew there would be too much cheering for the lad. McNamara deserved death in the minds of so many. My uncle who lived in Mountauk back then told me as a kid this was proof McNamara was protected by the devil
It was a fuck story from the jump. The number of bad and politically motivated decisions are too numerous to count. One dumb move after another, some were just mistakes, most were politicians and generals believing their own bullshit, and then there were just a couple that were criminal in nature. And who paid the price? The grunts on the ground, naturally.