Speech to the American Bar Association

PRESIDENT JOHNSON - AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION, NEW YORK CITY - AUGUST 12, 1964 In Viet-Nam, too, we work for world The course that we have chosen will re- order. quire wisdom and endurance. But let no For IO years through the Eisenhower ad- one doubt for a moment that we have the ministration, the Kennedy administration, resources and we have the will to follow and this administration, we have had one this course as long as it may take. No one consistent aim-observance of the 1954 should think for a moment that we will be agreements which guaranteed the inde- worn down, nor will we be driven out, and pendence of South Viet-Nam. That inde- we will not be provoked into rashness. But pendence has been the consistent target of we will continue to meet aggression with aggression and terror. firmness and unproveked attack with For IO years our response to these attacks measured reply. has followed a consistent pattern. First, That is the meaning of the prompt re- that the South Vietnamese have the basic action of our destroyers to unprovoked at- responsibility for the defense of their own tack. That is the meaning of the positive freedom. Second, we would engage our reply of our aircraft to a repetition of that strength and our resources to whatever ex- attack. That is the meaning of the resolu- tent needed to help others repel aggression. tion passed by your Congress with 502 votes Now, there are those who would have us in favor and only 2 opposed. That is the depart from these tested principles. They meaning of the national unity that we have have a variety of viewpoints. All of them, shown to all the world last week. I am sure, you have heard in your local There is another consideration wherever community. the forces of freedom are engaged. No one Some say that we should withdraw from who commands the power of nuclear weap- South Viet-Nam, that we have lost almost ons can escape his responsibility for the life 200 lives there in the last 4 years, and we of our people and the life of your children. should come home. But the United States It has never been the policy of any Ameri- cannot and must not and will not turn aside can President to sympathetically or system- and allow the freedom of a brave people to atically place in hazard the life of this Nation be handed over to Communist tyranny. by threatening nuclear war. No American This alternative is strategically unwise, we President has ever pursued so irresponsible think, and it is morally unthinkable. a course. Our firmness at moments of crisis Some others are eager to enlarge the con- has always been matched by restraint-our flict. They call upon us to supply American determination by care. It was so under boys to do the job that Asian boys should do. President Truman at Berlin, under President They ask us to take reckless action which Eisenhower in the Formosa Straits, under might risk the lives of millions and engulf President Kennedy in the Cuba missile crisis. much of Asia and certainly threaten the And I pledge you that it will be so as long peace of the entire world. Moreover, such as I am your President. action would offer no solution at all to the In Viet-Nam, in Cyprus, and in every con- real problem of Viet-Nam. America can tinent, in a hundred different ways Amer- and America will meet any wider challenge ica's efforts are directed toward world order. from others, but our aim in Viet-Nam, as in Only when all nations are willing to accept the rest of the world, is to help restore the peaceful procedures as an alternative to force- peace and to reestablish a decent order. ful settlement will the peace of our world be secure.