However, the United States was committed to containing the spread of communism-this was at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union-and by the late 1950s, the American government had thrown its support behind South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem when he refused to hold elections. In 1954, following the defeat of the French colonialists at the hands of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, the last battle of the First Indochina War, the country of Vietnam was divided into northern and southern halves, ruled by separate regimes, during the Geneva Conference.Įlections were scheduled to reform the country under a unified government-elections the communists of the North, who had support in the rural South, were favored to win. However, that ultimately proved not to be the case. Johnson, with the understanding that the president would seek their approval before launching a full-scale war in Vietnam with U.S. Navy, both Maddox and Turner Joy reported being fired upon by North Vietnamese patrol boats, but later doubts surrounding the veracity of the second attack, on Turner Joy, emerged.Ĭongress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution at the insistence of President Lyndon B.
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