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The Vietnam War, Tonkin, and the alleged Stoicism of James Stockdale
The day is August 2nd, 1964. The destroyer USS Maddox has been sent on a mission near the coast of North Vietnam, in the Gulf of Tonkin, with the express purpose of provoking an armed response. Which it did. The outcome of the brief encounter was four dead and six wounded North Vietnamese sailors. No American casualties. The Johnson administration will later falsely claim that the confrontation was unprovoked and that it occurred in international waters.
Lyndon Johnson was up for reelection that year, and he wanted to escalate things in Vietnam to be seen as tough on communism. Apparently, the episode of August 2nd was not enough, so the National Security Agency claimed that there was a second confrontation two days later. This claim was entirely false, and President Johnson knew it. But it was what he needed to convince Congress to authorize him to deploy the US Military in Vietnam, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The reason I reminded you of this sordid story is that it involved one of the modern Stoic role models, James Bond Stockdale, and both the episode and Stockdale’s conduct shed a significant amount of light on the relationship between Stoicism and the military (about which I have written before). They also illuminate the crucial distinction between Stoicism as a philosophy of life and Stoicism as a collection of techniques, or “life hacks,” as they are often referred to.
First, let’s review the connection between Stockdale and Stoicism, and then I’ll get to his role in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Stockdale is often portrayed as a Stoic role model (including by yours truly in one of my early writings), because he wrote in his memoir, Courage Under Fire, that it was Stoicism — and particularly Epictetus’ Manual — that allowed him to survive seven years in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” as a prisoner of war.
Stockdale was captured when his fighter-bomber was shot down during one of his missions over North Vietnam. Here is how he recalls the events: “On September 9, 1965, I flew at 500 knots right into a flak trap, at tree-top level, in a little A-4 airplane — the cockpit walls not even three feet apart — which I couldn’t steer after it was on fire, its control system shot out. After ejection I had about thirty seconds to…
