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Excerpt from a speech on the Vietnam War

Delivered on February 8, 1968

"Reality is grim and painful. But it is only a remote echo of the anguish toward which a policy [U.S. military policy in Vietnam] founded on illusion is surely taking us."

Throughout the years of American involvement in Vietnam, U.S. government officials and military leaders became entangled in a great debate about the government of South Vietnam. Some people argued that if the United States continued to provide military and economic support, the South Vietnamese government could eventually build a democratic state that would be popular with the nation's people. But critics disagreed. They charged that the government was hopelessly corrupt and ineffective, and they noted that the South Vietnamese people felt no allegiance to their leaders. Some observers even claimed that the government's flaws were so great that...