Tag Archives: Senate Resolution 65

Avoiding Needless Wars, Part 3: Are We About to Repeat the Mistakes of Vietnam?

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Martin Hellman

In August of 1964 Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson a blank check to escalate the war in Vietnam. Two alleged acts of North Vietnamese unprovoked aggression were the basis for that resolution. But, as detailed in Part 1 of this series, their first attack was in response to covert American attacks on North Vietnam, and as detailed in Part 2 the second attack never occurred. This third installment in the series draws on additional formerly classified information to extend those arguments, and concludes by warning of might become a kind of “Iran War Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.” Continue reading →

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Should We Be Encouraging Israel to Attack Iran?

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Martin Hellman

I was surprised to find both of my senators cosponsoring Senator Lindsey Graham’s Senate Resolution 65, which “urges that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action [against Iran] in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel.” The problem isn’t if Israel attacks Iran in actual self-defense. But many nations, my own included, have sometimes attacked in the belief they were acting in self-defense, but were later found to be mistaken. Given its birth soon after the Holocaust and the history of Arab enmity, Israel is more likely than most to make such a mistake, and it concerned me that one of my senators was emboldening Israel in ways to make that even more likely. Continue reading →

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