When the Department of Defense shared their conclusion that the Islamic Republic of Iran had been attacking oil tankers, leftist journalists rediscovered their skepticism. Gone were the wonderful days when the mere words of a retired British spy would be taken as a new gospel. Now journalists demanded proof, and not just any proof, but something vetted by an international commission, a panel of experts, or possibly Noam Chomsky. One of their reflexive retorts was ‘but the Gulf of Tonkin’.
The Myth of the Gulf of Tonkin goes something like this: “in the summer of 1964, nefarious forces in the U.S. government lied about North Vietnamese forces attacking an American ship. That was the excuse used to involve the United States in Vietnam.”
The myth is wrong in every particular; there’s no dispute North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the U.S.S Maddox July 31st; it was a second attack that didn’t happen, a result of phantom sonar pings. The myth paints the United States as the aggressor, when in fact North Vietnam had decided to escalate the conflict. (Ho Chi Minh had lost power to a junta of ‘hardline’ generals.) But no matter the facts, the myth lives on.
This is the result of the enormous cultural dominance of the Left in the Western world. Documentaries, movies, even fiction books accept the myth uncritically and pass it on. Since no one could possibly examine every claim they come across, and most people don’t bother at all, a lie like this can live on indefinitely. And thus we get the sad spectacle of thousands of people confidently shrieking ‘but the Gulf of Tonkin’.
