Notable Speech - In defense of freedom

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, April 12th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Notable Speeches, Past and Present.

On April 7th, 1965, President Lyndon B Johnson delivered a turning-point address on the subject of Vietnam. He spoke at Johns Hopkins University and national television networks carried it live.

Johnson’s half-hour address was titled: “Peace without Conquest.” News reports at the time called it his most important foreign-policy speech to date after having won the 1964 election promising peace.

REICHARD: After he committed ground troops to Vietnam in February 1965, he faced intense political pressure. An estimated 60-million people watched as the president defended his administration’s limited-warfare goals.

The speech quickly turned opinion in his favor. Johnson’s resolve reassured those who pushed for greater involvement in the conflict. And it seemed to satisfy others who were calling for peace after he promised restraint.

Here now are excerpts from the president’s speech:

PRESIDENT B. LYNDON JOHNSON: Vietnam is far away from this quiet campus. We have no territory there, nor do we seek any. The war is dirty and brutal and difficult. And some 400 young men, born into an America that is bursting with opportunity and promise, have ended their lives on Vietnam's steaming soil.

Why must we take this painful road?

Why must this Nation hazard its ease, and its interest, and its power for the sake of a people so far away?

We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure.

This kind of world will never be built by bombs or bullets. Yet the infirmities of man are such that force must often precede reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace.

We wish that this were not so. But we must deal with the world as it is, if it is ever to be as we wish.

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Why are these realities our concern? Why are we in South Vietnam?

We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American president has offered support to the people of South Vietnam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Vietnam defend its independence.

And I intend to keep that promise.

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There are those who wonder why we have a responsibility there. Well, we have it there for the same reason that we have a responsibility for the defense of Europe.

World War II was fought in both Europe and Asia, and when it ended we found ourselves with continued responsibility for the defense of freedom.

Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves-only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.

We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary.

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Our generation has a dream. It is a very old dream. But we have the power and now we have the opportunity to make that dream come true.

For centuries nations have struggled among each other. But we dream of a world where disputes are settled by law and reason. And we will try to make it so.

For most of history men have hated and killed one another in battle. But we dream of an end to war. And we will try to make it so.

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Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can do to unite this country? Have I done everything I can to help unite the world, to try to bring peace and hope to all the peoples of the world? Have I done enough?

Ask yourselves that question in your homes and in this hall tonight. Have we, each of us, all done all we could? Have we done enough?

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This generation of the world must choose: destroy or build, kill or aid, hate or understand.

We can do all these things on a scale never dreamed of before.

Well, we will choose life. In so doing we will prevail over the enemies within man, and over the natural enemies of all mankind.

To Dr. Eisenhower and Mr. Garland, and this great institution, Johns Hopkins, I thank you for this opportunity to convey my thoughts to you and to the American people.

Good night.

REICHARD: Just four short months after this speech, the Johnson administration committed to a full-scale war in Vietnam. Before the U.S. pulled out eight years later, more than 58,000 Americans died in the conflict.

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