Lyndon B. Johnson Address on aggression on Vietnam
September 29, 1967
This evening I came here to speak to you about Vietnam.
I do not have to tell you that our people are profoundly concerned about that struggle.
There are passionate convictions about the wisest course four nation to follow. There are many sincere and patriotic Americans who harbor doubts about sustaining the commitment that three Presidents and half a million of our young men have made.
Doubt and debate are enlarged because the problems of Vietnam are quite complex. They are a mixture of political turmoil - of poverty - of religious and factional strife of ancient servitude and modern longing for freedom. Vietnam is all of these things.
Vietnam is also the scene or a powerful aggression that is spurred by an appetite for conquest.It is the arena where Communist expansionism is most aggressivelyat work in the world today - where it is crossing international frontiers in violation of international agreements; where it is killing and kidnaping; where it is ruthlessly attempting to bend commitment.
Why?...
But the key to all we have done is really our own security. At times of crisis, before asking Americans to fight and die to resist aggression in a foreign land, every American President has finally had to answer this question:
Is the aggression a threat not only to the immediate victim but to the United States of America and to the peace and security of the entire world of which we in America are a very vital part?
That is the question which Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had to answer in facing the issue in Vietnam.That is the question that the Senate of the United Stated answered by a vote of 82 to 1 when it rarified and approved the SEATO treaty in 1955, and to which the members of the United States Congress responded in a resolution - Tonkin Bay - that it passed in 1964 by a vote of 504 to 2.
Those who tell us now that we should abandon our commitment, that securing South Vietnam from armed domination is not worth the price we are paying, must also answer this question. And the test thez must meet is this: What would be the consequence of letting armed aggression against South Vietnam succeed? What would follow in the time ahead? What kind of world are they prepared to live in five month or five years from tonight?Fot those who have borne the responsibility for decision during these past ten years, the stakes to us have seemed clear - and have seemed high...
I cannot tell you tonight as your President - with certainly - that a Communist conquest of South Vietnam would be followed by a Communist conquest of Southeast Asia. But I do know there are North Vietnamese troops in Laos. I do know that there are Communist-supported guerilla forces operating in Burma. And a Communist coup was barely averted in Indonesia, the fifth largest nation in the world.
So your American President cannot tell you - with certainly - that a Southeast Asia dominated by Communist power would bring a third world war much closer to terrible reality. One could hope that this would not be so.But all that we have learned in this tragic century strongly suggests to me that is would be so. As President of the United States, I am not prepared to gamle on the chance that it is not so. I am not prepared to risk the security - indeed, the survival - of this American Nation on mere hope and wishful thinking. I am convinced that by seeing this struggle through now we are greatly reducing the chances of a much larger war - perhaps a nuclear war. I would rather stand in Vietnam in our time, and by meeting this danger now and facing up to it, thereby reduce the danger for our children and for our grandchildren.The price of these efforts, of course, has been heavy. But the price of not having made them at all, not having seen them through, in my judgement would have been vastly greater.Our goals has been the same: in Europe, in Asia, in our own hemisphere. I has been - and it is now - peace.And peace cannot be secured by wishes; peace cannot be preserved by noble words and pure intentions. Enduring peace - Franklin D. Roosevelt said - cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom...
The true peacekeepers in the world tonight are not those who urge us to retire from the fiel in Vietnam, who tell us to try to find the quickest, cheapest exit from that tormented land, no matter what the consequesces to us may be.
The true peacekeepers are those men who stand out there on the DMZ at this very hour taking the worst that the enemy can give. The true peacekeepers are the soldiers who are breaking the terrorist's grip around the villages of Vietnam, the civilians who are bringing medical care and food and education to people who have already suffered a generation of war.
And so I report to you that we are going to press forward. Two things we must do. Two things we shall do.
First, we must not mislead our enemy. Let him not think that debate and dissent will produce wavering and withdrawal. For I can assure you they won't. Let him not think that protests will produce surrender. Because they won't. Let him not think that he will wait us out. For he won't.
Second, we will provide all that our brave men require to do the job that must be done. And that job is going to be done...
Let the world know that the keepers of peace will endure through every trial - and that with the full backing of their country-men, they are goint to prevail.