August: The bleakest of months?

Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Is August the bleakest of months? One century ago this August, World War I was about to set Europe and a good part of the world aflame. Seventy-nine years ago, two nuclear bombs eviscerated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With the advent of thermonuclear weapons, one thousand times more powerful than atom bombs, war would pose an existential threat to society.

Sixty years ago, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution with only two dissenting Senate votes that sent the United States off to a war it would not win in Southeast Asia. The Tonkin Gulf incident may be surprisingly relevant today, as well as the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week. Why?

First, the North Vietnamese PT boat attacks against two U.S. destroyers that triggered the resolution never occurred. Second, without any confirming evidence, suppose Israel was not responsible for Haniyeh's death. Yet, Iran might well have retaliated. Is history repeating or rhyming?

After France abandoned Indochina in 1954 and Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel between north and south, the United States began upping its involvement to prevent the so-called "domino theory," in which Southeast Asian states would fall under communist control as North Vietnam had. This theory was perpetuated in the false belief of a monolithic, godless communist bloc headed by the Soviet Union and Communist China, posing a real if not existential danger to the West and its Asian friends.

In November 1963, shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy , a CIA-led operation to remove Republic of Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem went badly wrong. Diem was murdered. And a long line of autocratic regimes led by military generals and air marshals would begin.

The CIA had also been supporting South Vietnamese commando raids against the north, run out of Danang, the capital of I Corps, the south's northernmost region situated on the DMZ. On Aug. 2, 1964, believing the US Navy destroyer USS Maddox , steaming in international waters on the DeSoto Patrol in the Tonkin Gulf was part of one raid, North Vietnamese PT boats attacked. There were no casualties on either side.

Not to be cowed, USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy were ordered back on station in the DeSoto area as a show of force. On the evening of Aug. 4th, both ships reported they had been attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats. With that as a pretext, President Lyndon B. Johnson drafted the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that Congress overwhelmingly passed. The resolution was a blank check for war.

As the United States would learn to its own regret in 2003 in Iraq over Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), there was no second North Vietnamese PT attack. In a rush to judgment, U.S. leadership thought America's massive military superiority over the North would terminate any conflict quickly and out terms. That did not happen.

Now, the conflict between Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran is at risk of escalation to a wider war. Exacerbated by Haniyeh's assassination, is an Iranian rush to justice similar to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution possible -- that is, going to war for the wrong reasons? And further suppose those wishing the United States ill chose to attack increasing American military presence in the region as an opportunity to entangle Washington and to provoke an overreaction as Oct. 7th did for Israel?

The obvious suspect for the Haniyeh execution was Israel. But where is the evidence and proof? Why would Israel wish to kill the leader of Hamas' peace delegation if it put any stock in seeking peace? Could Israel have done it without the help of internal Iranian help? Surely, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps could not have been so incompetent as not to sweep guest houses for bugs and bombs on a frequent basis. And dissident Iranian or other elements could have been responsible.

Consider worst case possibilities. Iran retaliates for an assassination Israel did not commit. A U.S. warship is hit by the Houthis in the Red Sea, or a suicide bombing like the one that crippled USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 or killed 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983 reoccurs. What would be America's reaction? It would not be turning the other cheek.

August is not always a cheerful month. Sixty years ago, an erroneous report of a PT boat attack that never occurred catalyzed war. Regardless of guilt, Iran may retaliate against Israel. And if U.S. military forces were attacked in the region, what then? This is not August 1964. But could it be worse?

Harlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior advisor at Washington's Atlantic Council, the prime author of "shock and awe" and author of "The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large." Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.