(11-25-2016 12:21 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(11-23-2016 02:52 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(11-23-2016 02:16 PM)JSA Wrote:  

(11-11-2016 06:15 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  When I first saw the title of this thread, my mind read it as "Truman Administration".
If only!

He wasn't a leftist big-city machine Democrat politician?
Would you really have supported Truman in 1948?

I'm not sure how I would have felt at the time. But looking back on just a few of his foreign policy achievements:
- the Marshall Plan
- NATO
- the Berlin Airlift
... I know that he did more for the free world, and at a more dangerous time, than most people ever dream of.

Perhaps typing in haste, I left out at least two other important achievements:
- the aid to Greece and Turkey
- the defense of South Korea

Those are five momentous decisions, and Harry Truman was five for five. If they had not been done, it is staggering to think how much smaller and weaker the free world would have been, and how much darker and deadlier the ensuing half-century.

In a sensible world, a record like that would have earned him the Nobel Peace Prize (I mean, compare that record to Barack Obama's in 2009). The prize did go to his Secretary of State, the great George Marshall, but Truman probably gets too little credit.

Truman said it was surprising what you could accomplish if you didn't worry about who got the credit.