"We shall not fail, we shall not tire, we shall not withdraw": Johnson's pledge in Vietnamese

A 1968 JUSPAO poster pairs a portrait of President Lyndon B. Johnson with a three-line pledge in Vietnamese, "we shall not fail, we shall not tire, we shall not withdraw," and says the U.S. Government will forever honor his 7 April 1965 commitment to South Vietnam. It cites remarks of 24 October 1966 and 31 March 1968.

What it prints

The archive describes a horizontal sheet: a blue-toned portrait of Johnson, the three-line pledge in white on blue, and two boxes marked with stars that hold quotations from his speeches. A capitalized paragraph sets out the promise the poster is built on.

CHÚNG TÔI SẼ KHÔNG THỂ THẤT BẠI.

CHÚNG TÔI SẼ KHÔNG MỆT MỎI.

CHÚNG TÔI SẼ KHÔNG RÚT LUI.

NGÀY 7-4-1965 TỔNG THỐNG HOA KỲ LYNDON B. JOHNSON ĐÃ LONG TRỌNG CAM KẾT GIÚP ĐỠ NHÂN DÂN VIỆT NAM CỘNG HÒA CHO ĐẾN CÙNG. CHÁNH PHỦ HOA KỲ VẪN MÃI MÃI TÔN TRỌNG LỜI CAM KẾT ẤY ĐỐI VỚI NHÂN DÂN MIỀN NAM VIỆT NAM.

[...]

Tổng Thống Johnson đã ngỏ lời với nhân dân Mỹ (ngày 31-3-1968).

2746

Who issued it

The maker is the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office printing section in Saigon. The National Archives files the sheet in Record Group 306 among the Psychological Warfare Posters of the Vietnam War, series NAID 561393, item 306-VP-01-2746. The audience is a foreign public, and the purpose is coded "reassure." Unlike many JUSPAO sheets, this one is coded as openly sourced: an American president speaks in his own name, under his own face.

How to read it

FRAME tags testimonial and glittering generalities. The reassurance rests on the president's portrait and his words, with no figures and no evidence beyond the pledge itself. The word that does the most work is "forever" (mãi mãi). A president can promise what his administration will do. He cannot bind the voters and Congresses that come after him, and a sheet telling a foreign public that the U.S. Government will honor a pledge forever claims more than any elected officer can deliver.

The quotations are in Vietnamese only. FRAME's English is a translation back from the Vietnamese, not Johnson's original sentences, and the record does not give the English texts. Readers should not cite this poster as a source for what Johnson said word for word.

For the domestic side, see Johnson's Tonkin broadcast of 1964. The USIA's The United States Position on Viet-Nam quoted an earlier Johnson pledge for readers in Manila in 1965. The Vietnam War messaging hub collects the rest.