President Johnson put destroyers in harm's way in the Tonkin Gulf not only once, but several times, with the, with a lot of his people hoping that it would lead to a confrontation and claiming that it had. And could have resulted in the lost of many lives in the course of it.
“No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.”