The cause Vietnam War, has been for many years, disputed and never officially stated be either the United States or the Vietnamese government. The most widely accepted and logical cause was the Tonkin Gulf Incident. The Tonkin Gulf Incident began a string of events that eventually started the United States armed forces involvement in the war.

        On the second of August, 1964 a United States destroyer, the USS Maddox entered the Gulf of Tonkin. The Maddox was sent to monitor South Vietnamese raids on Northern Vietnamese ports and radar installations. The ship sailed just within eight miles off the northern coast of Vietnam, which was well within the twelve mile limit the Northern Vietnamese had set, but also well outside the three mile international territorial limit. The Vietnamese sent patrol boats to intercept and sink the Maddox, but the Maddox sunk two of the patrol boats and left the area.USS Maddox

        Two Days later, on August 4, the USS Maddox and another ship, the USS Turner Joy reentered the gulf, near where the Maddox had its "confrontation" just two days earlier. But in the middle of tropical storm both ships experienced massive electronic malfunction. The captains of both ships 'assumed' they were being fired upon and began a counter attack, even though no evidence can prove they were in any way attacked. This incident was taken by the United States government as provocation to enter the war, which had been strongly backed by the US Military for some time.

        Late that same day the US began its first bombing raid on North Vietnam, escalating the already tense mood between the South Vietnamese and the Vietcong, the South Vietnamese communists. This was a major turning point which allowed the US to begin to assist the South Vietnamese.

          The United States began to assist the South Vietnamese on the eighth of March, 1965, when the US government decided the South Vietnam Army could defeat the Vietcong. By the end of that year the US Military sent more than 200,000 American troops to South Vietnam, a number which by 1967 reached about 540,000 Americans.

        Back in the United States, great public outrage for the war sparked riots and protests. A new generation was born out of the war, they found the war to be pointless and began the protests. And after the war this generation and the rest of the country found the so called war to be a tragedy, and sparked for no reason at all, except possibly a small incident that offered the perfect excuse to start a war.
 

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