Remarks Upon Arrival at Subang Airport, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Your Majesties, the Honorable Prime Minister, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen:

I am delighted to be here in Malaysia. I feel that I know you because Malaysia, like the United States, is a federation of States which were once colonies of Great Britain--and because Malaysia is, like the United States, a nation of many diverse peoples, different religions, and different cultures. Here, as in America, you are working to reduce racial tensions so that all men may live in peace with one another.

Malaysia, like the United States, has been making great social and economic progress, based on the concept of personal initiative. That concept--that a man should be free to make the best of his life as he sees fit--is one that the people of America cherish.

But though I feel that I know you, I have come here to learn from you. I know that your nation is a model of what may be done by determined and farsighted men in Southeast Asia, and in other parts of the world. You valiantly subdued a Communist insurgency in your own nation. And then, from the very same room where you once planned battle strategy, you planned the works of peace. You began building a free and prospering countryside that can relieve the poverty and the apathy upon which communism so often thrives.

Your achievement in this respect, I believe, has the greatest significance for our struggle in Vietnam today. You have shown that military action can stop Communist aggression, and that while the aggression is being stopped, and even more strongly when it is stopped--the peace, as well as the war, can be won.

Your example offers us hope for the future. It is a great pleasure to be here and to see it firsthand.

Mrs. Johnson and I look forward with great pleasure to our stay with you.

Thank you very much.