The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is Signed.
United States never declared war on North Vietnam. We assisted the French and South Vietnam for years, but it was The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which was drafted by Congress and approved by President Johnson that allowed for the formal expansion of the Vietnam War on August 7, 1964. It was the document that supported our expansion in this undeclared war. They put together this resolution because it was claimed that the North Vietnamese attacked ships in the Tonkin Sea. We didn’t want to declare a war, so this allowed our president to send troops without doing such.
This is the document signed by President Johnson.
The Vietnam War was a military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This was part of a series of Vietnamese wars regarding the use of differing political parties, namely Capitalism (South Vietnam) and Communism (North Vietnam). Northern Vietnam was taken over during a financial and agricultural drought that rendered the territory easily captured. The Communist countries based in North Vietnam wanted to oppress (or Liberate in their terms) South Vietnam, but they were met with opposition from Anti-Communist parties. Some Northern armies formed the Viet Cong( or the National Liberation Front) which fought using mostly guerrilla warfare against the Anti-Communist parties in Southern Vietnam.
The war started because communism was seeking to expand in Vietnam much the way it had attempted to expand in Korea, and the USA had a policy to containment, to hold the communists to what they had without expanding, and they were also afraid that if Vietnam became communists, so would other nearby countries, falling like a series of domino's to the communists.
The war started because communism was seeking to expand in Vietnam much the way it had attempted to expand in Korea, and the USA had a policy to containment, to hold the communists to what they had without expanding, and they were also afraid that if Vietnam became communists, so would other nearby countries, falling like a series of domino's to the communists.
Gulf of Tonkin Indecent
In the Gulf of Tonkin incident, North Vietnamese torpedo boats supposedly attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, off Vietnam, in a pair of assaults on August 2 and 4 of 1964. It was the basis for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which committed major American forces to the war in Vietnam. The resolution passed the House of Representatives unanimously, and passed in the Senate with only two dissenting votes.