Lyndon Charles Johnson Peace Without Conquest Sparknotes

On April 7th, 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson delivered his iconic speech, “Peace Without Conquest.” This speech was his first about the war in Vietnam and was given at John Hopkins University. The speech was given because the reluctance to the Vietnam war was growing. This was due to Operation Rolling Thunder, which had just started. At the beginning of his speech he explained the war itself and how it started, “…North Vietnam has attacked the independent nation of South Vietnam.” He then explained the “unparalleled brutality” going on, in order to get everyones hearts to understand why we are at war. He went into grave detail about the everyday life of Vietnam people. Then Communist China came in. He explained how Vietnam is a small part of the bigger picture when it came to the war. But the question everyone wanted an answer too,”why are we in South Vietnam?” was finally brought up. Johnson claimed that we have a pledge to help out South Vietnam. He spoke about how American

This was because the “appetite of aggression is never satisfied.” To even further his idea of this being a moral obligation he brought up the Bible. “…in the words of the Bible: ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.’” He explained that the US’s only objective is to maintain the freedom of South Vietnam. Since attacks in Vietnam were growing stronger we had to send in attacks by air. Johnson then made an extremely bold statement, “We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw, either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.” This statement was a strong statement of the US’s investment in the war. Of course we go into every war not wanting to withdraw but in this instance this statement made waves. Many people believed we should have NEVER gone into this war in the first place and now the president made the statement that we will NOT withdraw under any