Still a war, fewer foreigners
WI more information came into the public domain about the "Tonkin Gulf incident" and Congrss did not pass the resolution.
Does this prevent the Vietnam war.
What are the cosequences for the 1964 election, I am guessing people still do not vote for Goldwater
LBJ doesn't get the go ahead for the build up if there is no Resolution, do I have that right?
Still a war whether there is US involvement or not, just fewer news crews and a communist victory ten years earlier.
South Vietnam collapses in 1965. The plan the North used to win the war in 1975 was the same one they had used in 1965. That is 'lay siege to a major base in the Central Highlands, then wipe out the relief force, seize Kontum and Pleiku and drive to the coast cutting the country in half.'
With no 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) to respond it works.
Mass panic, 50,000 US advisors that are mixed in with the South Vietnamese Army take heavy casualties, a lot don't make it out before the end and the attempt to extract them causes what morale there is to collapse because the United States is abandoning them in a way the average soldier can see.
Lyndon Johnson blames congress for not giving him the Resolution. Congress blames Johnson for raising the advisor strength from 12,000 to 50,000 when the situation was not salvageable.
60,000 teenage Americans are not Killed in Action. The better part of a million Vietnamese are also not KIA. Vietnam never becomes a cause of any great note, and the social changes that grew out of the anti-war rebellion - the whole hippy drug culture - are toned down and take decades longer.
Or maybe David Drake was right and America goes on to fight a remarkably similar war in Lebanon instead.