This week marks the 60th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that committed the United States to fighting and then losing the Vietnam War.

On Aug. 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats that wrongfully believed Maddox was part of a South Vietnamese strike group delivering a hit-and-run raid on the north.

Two days later, the Maddox and USS Turner Joy were ordered back on patrol off the North Vietnamese coast. Both reported being attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats.

But those attacks never took place. President Lyndon B. Johnson, however, used the pretext of those attacks to present the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to Congress, authorizing the commander-in-chief to respond with force.

On Aug. 7, 1964, with only two dissenting votes in the Senate, Congress passed the resolution. The U.S. was at war in Vietnam.

That resolution would not be the only time a U.S. president was given the authority to go to war for unproven allegations. On Oct. 16, 2002, George W. Bush signed the resolution that led to the Iraq War on the grounds of eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. As it turned out and despite assertions........

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