compelled2283
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2019–2023
3:34 · 169K views · Mar 4, 2008
A four-minute extract from the documentary The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara discusses the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He acknowledges that the second reported attack did not happen.
HN commenters cite it as primary-source evidence that the public was misled about the second Tonkin attack.
3 comments from Hacker News
That's fair context, here is some more: In 2017, there were 14 recorded casualties from mines/unexploded remnants of war (ERW) in Vietnam, while in 2016 there were 1,943 in Afghanistan. However since 1975 there have been 105,073 casualties from mines/ERW in Vietnam, while there have been 29,662 casualties from mines/ERW in Afghanistan since 1978. [LINK] [LINK] The Soviet-Afghan War was started in 1979 when Alfa Group (the KGB's 'spetsnaz') dressed in Afghani uniforms stormed the Queens Palace in Kabul and murdered the Afghani president Hafizullah Amin. Amin had been in office only three months, and came to power by deposing and ordering the murder of his predecessor Nur Muhammad Taraki. Taraki was a communist and before his demise, had plead with the Soviets for military intervention. Before Taraki's demise he and Amin had worked together and together both are known for murdering thousands of civilians and political opponents. The Vietnam War was sold to the American public in 1964 after two separate attacks on USN ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. However in 2003 Robert McNarmara (who was the Secretary of Defense when this happened) publicly admitted the second attack had never happened. The American public was told there were two distinct attacks on two separate nights, but that wasn't true: this video I suppose my point is that both wars were huge unpopular clusterfucks that were started on false pretexts, that neither Afghanistan nor Vietnam were placid before foreign interventio
> A lot of other people would cite the Gulf of Tonkin as an example too, but that's something I know less about so I'll leave it to someone else. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was explained to the American public at the time as pair of attacks on two separate nights against the US Navy by the North Vietnamese. This was used as the casus belli for the Vietnam War; in response to the two attacks congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which authorized LBJ to start a war (without formally declaring a war...) The first attack probably did happen, however in 2003 Robert McNamara (who had been the US Secretary of Defense at the time of the incident) admitted the second attack never happened. Straight from the horse's mouth: this video
For completeness, the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident was two alleged incidents. One of them probably happened and the other almost certainly didn't (admitted by Robert McNamara years later.) The first incident, the one that probably happened, was insufficient casus belli for LBJ and then conveniently for the war hawks the second incident, which never actually happened, sealed the deal two days later. McNamara's tacit admission: this video