PU The Vietnam War - Class 3 The Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964)

April 17, 2025
7:00pm - 8:30pm

Starting in 1964, U.S. and anticommunist S. Vietnamese quietly military entered into N. Vietnam, attempting to prevent the infiltration of the communist N. Vietnamese into S. Vietnam. These efforts attempted to destabilize the N. Vietnamese military effort to absorb S. Vietnam. The secret S. Vietnamese and U.S. deployment was named Operation Plan 34A, (OPLAN-34A). As part of the Plan, U.S. ships were stationed off the coast of N. Vietnam, in the Gulf of Tonkin, monitoring N. Vietnamese military action. Even though LBJ and his top military officials knew that the evidence for attacks on U.S. ships was sketchy, they used a N. Vietnamese attack on a U.S. ship in the Gulf in early Aug. 1964 to ask the U.S. Congress for a “blank check” to escalate the U.S. war effort in S. Vietnam.  Congress agreed. Abetted by a perceived mandate from a landslide Presidential victory in Nov. 1964, Johnson embarked on massive U.S. military escalation, thought necessary to contain communism. Over the course of nine years, Johnson and Richard M. Nixon ordered about 8.7 million U.S. military and civilian personnel to S. Vietnam.

Instructor: Dr. James F. Siekmeier received his PhD in History from Cornell in 1993, specializing in the history of U.S. foreign relations towards Latin America. He has taught at colleges and universities in Washington, D.C., New York, Iowa, Texas, and in Bolivia, on two Fulbright Grants (where he taught courses on North American history in Spanish). From 2001 to 2007 he compiled the American Republics volumes in the Foreign Relations of the US Series, the official documentary history of US foreign policy put out by the US State Department. He has published The Bolivian Revolution and the United States, 1952-Present (Penn State University Press, 2011) as well Latin American Nationalism: Identity in Globalizing World (Bloomsbury, 2017). Currently, he is a Professor of History at West Virginia University. He is working a history of the “war on drugs” in South America from the 1970s to the present.

- People's University Online-
Thursdays from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm on YouTube Live and Facebook Live

Subscribe to the People's University Youtube channel or like us on the People's University Facebook page or to receive notifications of our upcoming People's U broadcasts. To receive emails about our upcoming programs, visit our News page, click the "Subscribe" button to sign-up for our news blasts or download our free OCPL Connect app from your smartphone's app store. 

ABOUT THE OCPL'S PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY SERIES:

In 1951, the Ohio County Public Library's librarian, Virginia Ebeling, referenced British historian Thomas Carlyle, who said, “the public library is a People’s University,” when she initiated a new adult education program with that name. Miss Ebeling charged the library with the responsibility of reaching “as many people in the community as possible.” In keeping with that tradition of public libraries as sanctuaries of free learning for all people, the Ohio County Public Library revived the series in 2010.

The People’s University features courses (taught by experts in each subject) that enable patrons to pursue their goal of lifelong learning in classic subjects such as history, music appreciation, philosophy, and literature. Patrons may attend as many classes as they wish. There are no tests of other requirements and all programs are free and open to the public. For more information about PU: The Cold War, EMAIL US,  visit ohiocountylibrary.org or call the library at 304-232-0244.