Search Results for:

“In a [April 11] 1951 address explaining America’s participation in the Korean War, President [Harry] Truman insisted that if the allies ‘had followed the right policies in the 1930s–if the free countries had acted together to crush the aggression of the dictators, and if they had acted at the beginning when the aggression was small–there probably would have been no World War II. If history has taught us anything, it is that aggression anywhere in the world is a threat to peace everywhere in the world.’ ”

 – Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War Over Iraq, Page 115

In an address to the nation on July 19, 1950, President Harry Truman explained “why it was necessary for the United States to resist aggression in Korea. ‘Korea is a small country, thousands of miles away, but what is happening there is important to every American. …The attack upon Korea was an outright breach of the peace and a violation of the Charter of the United Nations. …This is a direct challenge to the efforts of the free nations to build the kind of world in which men can live in freedom and peace. …This challenge has been presented squarely. We must meet it squarely.’ ”

 – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Pages 116-117

“In [July 26] 1947, during the Truman administration, Congress approved the National Security Act, which among other things created the Department of Defense (by merging the War and Navy departments), the CIA, and the National Security Council.”

 – Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, Page 317

“The era [of postwar American foreign policy] commenced in [March 12] 1947 with a congressional address by [President] Harry Truman in which he allowed the ‘frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free people, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.’ ”

 – Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War Over Iraq, Page 112

President Harry Truman’s address to Congress on March 12, 1947, (Truman, a Democrat, was inaugurated on April 12, 1945) marked the start of the Truman Doctrine, which defined the U.S.’s attempts to contain the spread of communism. In a speech pledging financial support for Turkey and Greece, he said: ” ‘I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.'”

 – President Harry Truman, “Address of the President of the United States–‘Recommendation for Assistance to Greece and Turkey,'” March 12, 1947, Avalon Project, Avalon.Yale.edu, Accessed on 1/13/2016