The Gulf of Tonkin Revisited
As the forty-sixth anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf affair approaches, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee's recent declassification and release of its 1968 hearings is a timely reminder of the events that gave President Lyndon Johnson the legal authority to wage war in Vietnam. Although historians will not find much that is new in the transcripts about Vietnam, the material nonetheless captures the committee's mood of growing despair, frustration and powerlessness as committee members anguished over the costs of the war. And, as a result of the committee's staff investigation into and report about the Tonkin affair, members were upset that the administration may have deceived them about events in the Gulf of Tonkin that won their concurrence for the Tonkin resolution.
In his testimony of February 20, 1968, retiring Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara sought to make the case that, yes, there had been a second incident involving a North Vietnam attack on the U.S.S. Maddox, a Sumner-class destroyer, in the Gulf on August 4, 1964. Although much of the exchange with committee members was rather technical in nature, having to do with McNamara's discussion of communication intercepts, they remained skeptical of his claim that such an attack had ever taken place. What was not known publicly for many years after McNamara's appearance was the fact that the National Security Agency had reported in error that the August 2 attack had occurred on August 4. It was a stunning error that may have influenced upper-level policymakers in Washington, including McNamara and possibly the president himself.
The war itself had caused great consternation among members of the committee. Senator Albert Gore (D. Tenn.) spoke to their concerns when he remarked that "If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many have crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great." Although the committee was furious with Johnson, it was hesitant to challenge the White House without having positive proof of duplicity. It was also unwilling to play Samson and bring down the temple at a time when the North Korean seizing of the U.S.S. Pueblo in January 1968 raised the specter of another war on the Asian mainland. Fearing that possibility, members welcomed the Johnson administration's cautious response to this dangerous challenge.
On the other hand, nothing had changed in Vietnam. There, the war continued with growing American casualties and the appearance of a battlefield stalemate. What was the Foreign Relations Committee to do to offset a prospect that promised only more of the same? A forceful attack on Johnson would probably not helped matters, as he was determined to stay the course, and the committee had no viable alternative at the time that would have won much support in the rest of the Senate, let alone in the country.
A challenge to Johnson was in the offing, thanks to Senator Eugene McCarthy (D—MN), who was a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He raised the political costs for the president by taking the issue of the war into the 1968 New Hampshire Democratic primary, where he won enough support to weaken Johnson's political standing. That result, along with his possible concern about primaries to come, may have prompted LBJ"s decision not to seek reelection. Once he withdrew from the race and opened talks with Hanoi, Vietnam no longer had the same urgency for the committee.
The constitutional issue remained important, however. Implicit in the committee's discussion about the war was the matter of how to reassert a congressional role in war-making decisions. Ironically, of course, the committee had played a role when it voted to approve the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in August 1964. Members were later incensed to discover that they had been manipulated by a fabrication concerning an alleged event in the Gulf of Tonkin about which they could do little or nothing. Could it be that in reality members were facing a constitutional dictatorship with regard to the power of the presidency in the realm of foreign policy, which went along with control of the war-making machinery of government?
As the Vietnam War continued well into the Nixon administration, Congress moved to repeal the Tonkin Resolution, which became law with Nixon's signature in January 1971. Ignoring that repeal, he insisted that his authority to act in Vietnam rested on his power as commander-in-chief. While Nixon so argued, Congress made a fresh effort to put some kind of restraint on the president's power to make war, which culminated in the passage of the War Powers Act of 1973. Nixon, weakened by Watergate, vetoed this legislation, which was overridden by a margin of only four votes in the House. Despite its passage, Senators William Fulbright (D—AR) and Frank Church (D—ID), long-time opponents of the Vietnam War, both recognized that the War Powers Act was not really adequate to the task of containing the war-making power of the president. They rightly understood that public opinion, not simply legislative action by Congress alone, was the key to holding presidential authority in check.
Alas, the Tonkin Gulf affair was not the only example of administrational deceit in operation. President George W. Bush's war with Iraq in March 2003 was fueled by intense speculation that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons and that he had to be stopped from fulfilling that objective. By insisting, then, that the war had to be waged as a matter of national security and national necessity, Bush largely disarmed many of his critics and won the backing of a majority of voters. Much like an earlier event in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, America went to war in 2003 as a result of rumor, inaccurate intelligence, and prior planning.