On August 2, 1964, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the American destroyer USS Maddox. Fire was returned and ultimately there were no U.S. casualties. This, on top of what is now known as a fictitious attack (evidently triggered by false radar returns, according to James Stockdale, who was there) two days later on the 4th, led Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution -- which began the shooting phase of the Vietnam War.

In her book The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman concludes with a chapter on the Vietnam War. There she describes how the French seduced the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen -- U.S. Secretary of State and Director of Central Intelligence respectively -- into believing that insurgent Vietnamese efforts to overcome the remaining French colonial interests were really a Communist uprising. President Eisenhower, though not on board with the notion, let his particularly powerful subordinates prevail. American military personnel were then deployed as “advisors” to the republic of South Vietnam.

Before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an even more profound turning point occurred with the murder of President John F. Kennedy… which was, at least to some degree, carried out by an avowed Communist. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, like Kennedy, was an “old school” Democrat… fervently anti-Communist, a true Cold Warrior. Occurring just a few months before the election of 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was made-to-order to rally the nation around the global struggle against the forces of Marxist tyranny.

And thus began the great mistake. Not only did about fifty-thousand Americans lose their lives, but many others were maimed both physically and psychologically. And the damage went way beyond the battlefield. Out from under their rocks crawled ultra-leftist zealots, intent on subverting the prevailing center-right nature of American politics. This was all happening when what demographers called “the goat in the python” -- the largest generation in American history -- was just coming of age. There’s very little that can radicalize a cohort of young people more so than the threat of conscription that could possibly lead to death.

This is not to say that even a majority of Baby Boomers were ultimately radicalized, but the threat of being drafted into a dangerous war where the United States wasn’t even remotely threatened, had a profound influence. When Richard Nixon became president, he did something politically brilliant. He cooled down the fulminating social unrest by instituting the draft lottery… so the potential candidates for being turned into cannon fodder would have a clearer idea of what their destiny might really be. But still, much of the damage had already been done.

The Baby Boomers of the sixties and seventies are now the seniors of today. Some are the elder statesmen (and women) of our ruling elite. And some of them still remain ingrained leftist radicals. The continuing expansion of government and its compulsion to micromanage private lives is a biproduct of this phenomenon.

Underscoring the profound irony of this narrative is the modern relationship between the U.S. and the Republic of Vietnam. After all the death and destruction wrought by both sides onto each other, we are now gladly doing profitable business with each other. Could it be that Tuchman was right and that Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong were really more interested in throwing off the French colonial yoke than in seizing the means of production and other typical commie objectives?

One cannot ignore Asian cultural qualities. Asians are typically mercantile -- they tend to set up stores and small factories wherever they go. Russians, however, are not mercantile. Ever go into a store and see “Made in Russia” on a product? Putin’s economy is propped up by the export of petroleum and natural gas. This is an extractive economy that was previously propped up by the export of furry animal pelts.

It may be worthy of consideration that the U.S.’s massive expenditure of both blood and treasure in Vietnam, even when there was no direct threat to our own realm, sent a suppressive message to other would-be insurrectionists. Since we failed to achieve our objective in Vietnam, the message, however, was mostly received domestically. Whenever a possible demand for American military intervention in a foreign land appears, a chorus reliably shouts: “No, no, not another Vietnam!”

Image: U.S. Navy