Name me one war America started. The War of 1812. (We attacked the UK over trade restrictions, among other things.)
The Mexican War. (We attacked Mexico to get California and the Southwest.)
The Vietnam War, and the U.S.-backed coup d'etat against South Vietnamese president Diem that preceded it. (The so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a complete lie.)
The Iraq War. (I'm sorry, but it's a fact.)
In each of these wars, the president and Congress of the United States acted in what they believed to be the national interest. That being said, every aggressor nation claims to be acting in its national interest.
In any case, the question of who started what is not always clear-cut. While we technically started the War of 1812 (we declared war on Britain on 18 June, 1812 and invaded Canada on 12 July), certain circumstances leading up to our attack could be construed as acts of aggression on the part of the British Empire. Vietnam was a battle of World War III, part of the containment strategy against the Commuists in the USSR and China. And we had solid strategic reasons to take down the Saddam Hussein regime as part of our overall strategy against global fundamentalist Islam.
However, we fought the Mexicans in order to take California and the whole Southwest for our own. It was a war of conquest, plain and simple.
While I'm glad that we won in Iraq and in Mexico, and sorry we lost in Vietnam, the fact remains that none of those three countries ever attacked the U.S.A. We had our reasons for starting those wars, but we did start them, and any refusal to acknowledge that we did is intellectually dishonest.
JULY 8, 1959 : (VIETNAM : Bien Hoa) Few Americans have heard of Bien Hoa, but the Vietnam War started there 50 years agotoday. at the time, 1,500 Americans were in S Vietnam, 300 of whom were military advisors. N Vietnam's communist leadership decided it was time to bring the Americans into their ongoing conflict with Saigon. Viet Cong planners targeted the Green House, the american advisors' residence at Bien Hoa. The attack was planned to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the administration of S Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
At 7 PM on July 8, 1959, 6 Viet Cong guerillas infiltrated the post wearing S Vietnamese uniforms, taking advantage of lax security during off-duty hours. It was movie night, and the lower floor of the Green House was dark. Six of the eight Americans based there were watching the 1957 drama "The Tattered Dress." The other two were playing tennis. Four enemy troops took positions near the windows looking into the large main room, while two others snuck into the kitchen through a back door. One of them, Nguyen Van Hue, carried a half-kilogram bomb made from two milk cans welded together.
The lights went off suddenly while the VC were getting into position. Master Sgt Chester Ovnand was changing reels on the projector. The guerillas opened fire. Sgt Ovnand, Maj Dale R Buis and Capt Howard boston were hit, and the rest scattered. The Americans were unarmed and could not return fire. Sft Ovnand crawled to the second floor, where he died of his wounds. maj buis stumbled into the kkitchen, where Nguyen Van Hue threw the bomb, which exploded, killing him and Maj Buis. A s Vietnamese cook and his eight year old son also died in the blast. The other VC fled with minor wounds. The rest of the assualt team withdrew, killing a S Vietnamese soldier along the way. The fight lasted just a few minutes.
Capt Boston was choppered to Saigon and then flown to Clark Field Hopspital in the Philippines. He survived, but Maj Buis and Sgt Ovnand became the first Americans to die in the Vietnam War. Their names can be found at the apex of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, on Panel E1, Row 1, directly below the large engraved "1959." A ceremony and wreath-laying will be held at the memorial today at 10:30 AM, sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.
Bien Hoa was a minor engagement in a faraway land. Americans had been killed in Vietnam before that attack, but from the enemy's point of view, Bien Hoa was the watershed, the declaration of war. The conflict would last 16 more years and take more than 58,000 American lives, a tragic sacrifice in a war that could have been won but wasn't.
----http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/08/america-in-vietnam/
Gulf of Tonkin was until several years later, in 1964.