Unintended consequences

On this day, Jan. 11, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson authorized a military plan which would have consequences few could foresee. Johnson approved OP Plan 34A, which would authorize U.S. naval forces to support South Vietnamese military action against North Vietnamese installations. While these actions had been going on for a while, OP Plan 34A would formalize the direct involvement in U.S. naval vessels and personnel in the operations. The U.S. support for these South Vietnamese operations had come from the CIA, but this transferred control and support to the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.

On Aug. 2, 1964, North Vietnamese gunboats sailed out and supposedly attacked the USS Maddox, which had been monitoring a nighttime South Vietnamese attack on a North Vietnamese radio transmitter. A second North Vietnamese attack was reported but never verified. Five days later President Johnson would ask Congress, in reaction to the alleged attacks, to approve the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which authorized military action against North Vietnam.

Congress approved the resolution and the U.S. moved from a purely advisory military role to active combat operations. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution marked the start of what most people think of as the War in Vietnam.

The consequences of the resolution would be seen 11 years later as the government of South Vietnam collapsed in 1975. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 2.59 million troops served in Vietnam in the course of the war and approximately 850,000 veterans are still alive. The number of U.S. troops killed in Vietnam is 58,220, although this number keeps increasing as more die from complications related to wounds and from exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange.

January 11 is a date few remember as notable, but that ignores the events and consequences that followed. The lessons learned in Vietnam were soon forgotten by those in Washington, and many had to be relearned in Iraq in the years after we invaded.

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He lives in Chaffee, Missouri.