1. Teacher: Brandon Carnevale
Unit Plan 2
Lesson for 10/30/2012
Grade Level: 11
Subject US History
1. Objectives
a. Students will examine the gulf of Tonkin Incident
b. Students will analyze the importance of the incident.
c. Students will be able to connect this incident to the eventual Vietnam War.
2. Lecture:
a. The American commitment to the war against Vietnam, which killed over 50,000 U.S.
military personnel, and probably over 2 million Vietnamese civilians, was cemented by
an incident that appears to involve more fiction than fact.
b. 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.
c. In retrospect it is clear that the alleged attack was little more than a transparent pretext for
war, delivered in a one-two punch. First, media descriptions of the August 2nd attack as
an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" hid the fact that the
Maddox was providing support for South Vietnamese military operations against the
North. Second, the alleged August 4th attack appears to be a fabrication, official accounts
attributing the "error" to confusion.
3. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
a. On Aug. 7, Congress passed a resolution drafted by the administration authorizing all
necessary measures to repel attacks against U.S. forces and all steps necessary for the
defense of U.S. allies in Southeast Asia. Although there was disagreement in Congress
over the precise meaning of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, Presidents Johnson and Richard
M. Nixon used it to justify later military action in Southeast Asia. The measure was
repealed by Congress in 1970. Retired Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1995
meeting with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, categorically denied that
the North Vietnamese had attacked the U.S. destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, and in 2001 it
was revealed that President Johnson, in a taped conversation with McNamara several
weeks after passage of the resolution, had expressed doubt that the attack ever occurred
4. Assessment: Study for Cold War Unit Test