What was the Gulf of Tokin Incident?
1964 was the year when everything changed in South Vietnam. Even as North Vietnam began to send its army south, President Johnson began to “Americanize” the war. He appointed his highest military official, General Maxwell Taylor, as U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. The actual dispatch of American ground troops would have to wait until after the November elections, which Johnson hoped to win by a huge margin in order to legitimize his presidency, which up to now had operated in the shadow of the martyred Kennedy. Meanwhile, the administration drew up a list of targets in North Vietnam that would be bombed unless Ho Chi Minh removed his forces from the south. (The North Vietnamese knew this, since they were warned; the American people did not.) However, Johnson didn’t want to send warplanes over North Vietnam without Congressional approval, so he also drew up a resolution for Congress to pass. All that was lacking was an excuse to present that resolution to Congress. That summer, South
