VIetnam War "cautionary tale that has gone unheeded"

They wanted a war, but didn't want to pay for the veterans they created. They wanted a war but didn't have plans to finish it. Lessons history tried to teach, but as we've seen, they learned nothing other than avoid drafting young men into service.

50 years on, fateful Vietnam resolution resonates
The Associated Press
By Hillel Italie
Published: August 9, 2014

In this Aug. 10, 1964 file photo, President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, as leaders of Congress stand by his desk for a ceremonial signing of the Congressional resolution, also known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, backing his firm stand against aggression in Southeast Asia.
AP

NEW YORK — A dubious threat to U.S. interests. A swift vote in Congress for broad presidential war powers in response. A long, costly and bitterly debated war.

Fifty years ago Sunday, reacting to reports of a U.S. Navy encounter with enemy warships in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam - reports long since discredited - President Lyndon Johnson signed a resolution passed overwhelmingly by Congress that historians call the crucial catalyst for deep American involvement in the Vietnam War. Many also see it as a cautionary tale that has gone unheeded.

"I think we are probably a bit better informed now, but I don't think that makes us a lot safer," says Edwin Moises, author of "Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War." Every era brings new foreign policy and political challenges, said the Clemson University history professor, "and I think it is utterly unpredictable what kind of misunderstandings may come along."

"If you ask whether we learned anything, I would say not enough," says former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who opposed the war in Iraq, long after Tonkin and Vietnam.
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