Aug. 30, 1964 - President Johnson gave his neighbors in Stonewall, Tex., a folksy lecture on foreign affairs last night and said he knew he was in for a “long and rough campaign.”
The President, in his first stump appearance of the campaign since the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, told a rode-grounds crowd of several thousand that “we will not indulge in any smear or fear.”
Here in Texas, on a hot summer night when war appeared far away, he told the crowd that when he had had to send planes over the Gulf of Tonkin to strike patrol-boat bases in North Vietnam early this month, “I gave an order I didn’t want to give.”
He said he believed the action he had taken was in the best interest of the nation.
“We let them know that we were prepared to back it up, and we did back it up,” the President said.
He said the action was taken to avoid bombing any cities.
“We said to them you must leave your neighbors in peace, and you mustn’t shoot at American destroyers without expecting a reply.”
The retaliatory action was taken after North Vietnamese patrol boats had fired on United States destroyers.
Mr. Johnson spoke at a Democratic rally and barbecue that was scheduled as an informal campaign curtain-raiser in his native Gillespie County. He was joined by his running mate in the Presidential campaign, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota.
Mr. Johnson described four alternatives in South Vietnam — to enlarge the war, to give up the country, to accept a neutralization that no one would guarantee and — the course being pursued — to give advice and assistance and try to hold the country together.
He said there had been fewer than 200 men lost in the Vietnamese war — “and we lose that many in Texas in accidents every Fourth of July” — but “it is better to lose 200 than 200,000.”
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