At
least FDR was a war-time president, which made his actions more legit, and his
offenses less grievous. Truman was a peace-time president, yet Unger claims he
continued down the path of FDR's "emergency state", so we should all
be confused by that.
When
he took over for FDR, Truman continued the "emergency, keeping the nation
in its state of unlimited national emergency (that FDR had declared in 1941)
until 1947, two years after the war had ended. This is a huge no-no
for Unger, who cites this occurrence as being the beginning of the peacetime
emergency state--the kind of emergency that has "no logical
termination..." (Unger 51).
In
addition, Unger believes that Truman essentially "picked the fight"
that led the US into the cold war. Rather than using diplomacy to "pursue
a more nuanced relationship with soviet Russia..." (Unger 55), Truman
bulled ahead with blatant anti-Soviet policy such as his "Truman
Doctrine" which stated that the US would help out Greece and Turkey so
that they didn't fall under the control of the Soviet dictatorship.
As
this announcement set the cold war into action, Truman "oversaw the
passage of the 1947 national security act, which created the architecture of
emergency state government..." (Greenberg 1) which consisted of the
Department of Defense, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National
Security Council.
Essentially,
Truman set up an illogical, and interminable emergency state. Without war, he
should have repealed some of FDR's more war-oriented policies. Instead, he
strengthened them.
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