Vietnam War; reason that didn’t exist | Declassified #7

There are tons of “good movies” on Vietnam War, don’t we all just search for a movie to understand history these days; movie about this, movie about that, we want to feel the emotions, the pain, the suffering, so that we can “understand” the situation, yeah yeah, good luck with that, keep underestimating the effect of movies. But anyway the war did happen, but why? Was there yet another false flag planned? Or maybe what Mossad did in Libya? Or maybe they need more opium farms? Some historians call Vietnam the “last modern war,” others the “first postmodern war.” Either way, it was irregular: Vietnam was not a conventional war with the frontlines, rears, enemy mobilising its forces for an attack, or a territory to be conquered and occupied. Instead, it was a formless conflict in which former strategic and tactical principles did not apply. “The Vietcong were fighting in an unexpected, surprising, and deceptive way to negate Americans’ strengths and exploit their weaknesses, making the Vietnam War perhaps the best example of asymmetrical warfare of the 20th century.”

But war is still a war.
Image source: buzzfeed

Aside from the drug addiction that most the Vietnam soldiers had on the “battleground” they probably didn’t even realize that they were fighting something staged as a requirement just as their drafting. The direct involvement of the US in the war was after a resolution; The Gulf of Tonkin incident, also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized President Lyndon Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” by the communist government of North Vietnam. It was passed on August 7, 1964, by the U.S. Congress after an attack on two U.S. naval destroyers stationed off the coast of Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively launched America’s full-scale involvement in the Vietnam War. The resolution was prompted by two separate attacks on two U.S. Navy destroyers, U.S.S. Maddox and U.S.S. Turner Joy, which occurred on August 2 and August 4, 1964, respectively. The two destroyers were stationed in the Gulf Tonkin, a body of water now often referred to as the East Vietnam Sea, in waters that separate Vietnam from the Chinese island of Hainan. They were there as part of an effort to support South Vietnamese military raids on what was then the North Vietnamese coast.

Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin resolution
Image source: findingDulCinea

Now here’s the twist; The Gulf of Tonkin incident, a major escalator of US involvement in the Vietnam War, never actually occurred. The original incident – also sometimes referred to as the USS Maddox Incident(s) –involved the destroyer USS Maddox supposedly engaging three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats as part of an intelligence patrol. The Maddox fired almost 300 shells. President Lyndon B. Johnson promptly drafted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which became his administration’s legal justification for military involvement in Vietnam. Problem is, the event never happened. In 2005, a declassified internal National Security Agency study revealed that there were no North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident. So, what was the Maddox firing at? In 1965, President Johnson commented: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.” It involved one real and one falsely claimed confrontation between ships of North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but the Pentagon Papers, the memoirs of Robert McNamara, and NSA publications from 2005, proved that the US government lied to justify a war against Vietnam. The NSA’s own historian, Robert J. Hanyok, wrote a report stating that the agency had deliberately distorted intelligence reports in 1964. He concluded: “The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq War make it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964.”

Gulf of Tonkin
Image source: history.com

Senator Frank Church, said in an executive session in February 1968:“In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them,” Other senators were keen to withhold the truth about Tonkin in order not to inflame public opinion on the war: Senator Mike Mansfield, stated, “You will give people who are not interested in facts a chance to exploit them and to magnify them out of all proportion.” Now frankly I don’t know if people should feel ashamed or insulted by these statement; with all the structure of a democracy, one primary vulnerability i.e. the people, remains – pinch their sentimental and emotional chord and you’ll have their support. Second one laughably states “people who are not interested in facts” I’ll leave this one for you to judge.

There are many more harrowing facts about the wars in 20th century that most mainstream history books won’t talk about, or perhaps you’re waiting for BuzzFeed to release a video on it. Regardless, most people will be riding far away from the facts of history that must contribute in their thinking about war, and wars in today’s era (beside the 3rd world countries) are not physical, but psychological, and most of it you’ve already absorbed as reality and you’ll soon know how.

Bibliography

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
  • https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm
  • https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/the-drugs-that-built-a-super-soldier/477183/
  • https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/20-of-the-most-powerful-photos-from-the-vietnam-war
  • https://www.infowars.com/de-classified-vietnam-era-transcripts-show-senators-knew-gulf-of-tonkin-was-a-staged-false-flag-event/
  • https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/gulf-of-tonkin-resolution-1

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