Editor,

While patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, the United States’ Seventh Fleet destroyers Maddox and probably the C. Turner Joy were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats during the early days of August 1964. When seen in historical context within a series of events, the attack against the Maddox came two days after American ally South Vietnam shelled two North Vietnamese islands. And as reprisal for the attacks against the two U.S. warships, U.S. forces aimed airstrikes at naval installations on North Vietnam’s mainland.

Soon it will be the 60th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, officially named the Southeast Asia Resolution. Even though North Vietnam wasn’t going anywhere, Congress swiftly passed the legislation Aug. 7, 1964. According to the Foreign Relations Committee staff, deliberations in the Senate totaled eight hours and 40 minutes.

In a book written decades later bearing the title “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” the author and 1964 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara acknowledged, “The closest the United States came to a declaration of war in Vietnam was the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of August 1964.”

The various actions taking place in the Gulf of Tonkin and the subsequent near-unanimous passage of the resolution were choices made by fallible human beings. Decision makers in Washington ultimately dispatched hundreds of thousands of young American combatants to war-torn Vietnam, thereby making a mutual slaughter larger still.

Gary Huffenberger

Wilmington