What happened at the Gulf of Tonkin?

Answer 1

A naval skirmish which accelerated American involvement in Vietnam.

When President Johnson informed Congress in 1964 that North Vietnamese vessels had attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin without cause, Congress authorized Johnson to take all necessary countermeasures through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

The Americans never declared war on Vietnam as a result of this, which effectively gave Johnson carte blanche to increase American military involvement in that country without first obtaining Congressional approval, particularly the Senate's support to declare war.

It was later discovered that there had only been one skirmish, not the two that the Johnson administration had claimed, and that the American ship in question, the Maddox, had engaged in illegal and covert attacks on islands in North Vietnam.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.