Counterpoint: Truman is not so easily pigeonholed. Yes, he let Eisenhower lock up defenseless German civilians at the end of the war, which resulted in an outrageous number of casualties. Yes, he recognized Israel, which destabilized the region and ultimately forced the US to make ridiculous alliances in order to secure the region’s everything resources.
However… unlike many U.S. Presidents, he showed a willingness to admit major mistakes in retirement. He called the creation of the CIA “the biggest damn fool thing I ever did.” It’s hard to imagine Truman making this statement without also accepting that CIA and its related organs essentially took over the government.
Overall great point and apologies if this seems like countersignaling.
I think there's a danger in taking too much away from one comment from former Presidents. It's interesting because we often hang on their every word, but that's really kind of a sentimental attachment to the man. LBJ is a good example, where he said a few things post-Presidency that are often held up by the JFK assassination subculture as indicative of a conspiracy. What does it prove? I'm not sure.
The harder truth is that these men are symbolic icons, the phrase 'puppets' is way too loaded but it captures something relevant here. They are the figureheads of a power structure that comes into power for a limited period of time. Presidents rarely have the option for unilateral action. I suppose that's why Truman's decision to drop the bomb is so interesting: it really came down to the decision of one man to drop one bomb on one city, with enormous human, political, and historical consequences. Later, there was a bit of a dispute as to who on Truman's inner circle were advocating for and against dropping it, so even here they were trying to spread the blame around.
So, was the creation of the CIA all Truman, how much influence did people like Clark Clifford have? How much was Dulles and Donovan? It's hard to say. For a President to later say it was a mistake kind of arrogates to themselves this idea that they could direct events in a way that I suspect they cannot. Maybe they can stop things if they had all the information, but of course that just requires choking off the flow of information to them, which seems very easy to do.
The American system sets itself up for extremely diffused accountability for individual decisions, even for Presidents. It's often challenging to say that one person is responsible for a specific policy. I think we can know these Presidents by the totality of their lives and their policies. If you listen to the way they talk and see the way they think, you get an idea of the man but you also get an idea as to the power structure behind them, and of course the era in which they lived.
TLDR: Truman sucks, but I won't fault him for nuking Japan.
Counterpoint: Truman is not so easily pigeonholed. Yes, he let Eisenhower lock up defenseless German civilians at the end of the war, which resulted in an outrageous number of casualties. Yes, he recognized Israel, which destabilized the region and ultimately forced the US to make ridiculous alliances in order to secure the region’s everything resources.
However… unlike many U.S. Presidents, he showed a willingness to admit major mistakes in retirement. He called the creation of the CIA “the biggest damn fool thing I ever did.” It’s hard to imagine Truman making this statement without also accepting that CIA and its related organs essentially took over the government.
Overall great point and apologies if this seems like countersignaling.
I think there's a danger in taking too much away from one comment from former Presidents. It's interesting because we often hang on their every word, but that's really kind of a sentimental attachment to the man. LBJ is a good example, where he said a few things post-Presidency that are often held up by the JFK assassination subculture as indicative of a conspiracy. What does it prove? I'm not sure.
The harder truth is that these men are symbolic icons, the phrase 'puppets' is way too loaded but it captures something relevant here. They are the figureheads of a power structure that comes into power for a limited period of time. Presidents rarely have the option for unilateral action. I suppose that's why Truman's decision to drop the bomb is so interesting: it really came down to the decision of one man to drop one bomb on one city, with enormous human, political, and historical consequences. Later, there was a bit of a dispute as to who on Truman's inner circle were advocating for and against dropping it, so even here they were trying to spread the blame around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interim_Committee
So, was the creation of the CIA all Truman, how much influence did people like Clark Clifford have? How much was Dulles and Donovan? It's hard to say. For a President to later say it was a mistake kind of arrogates to themselves this idea that they could direct events in a way that I suspect they cannot. Maybe they can stop things if they had all the information, but of course that just requires choking off the flow of information to them, which seems very easy to do.
The American system sets itself up for extremely diffused accountability for individual decisions, even for Presidents. It's often challenging to say that one person is responsible for a specific policy. I think we can know these Presidents by the totality of their lives and their policies. If you listen to the way they talk and see the way they think, you get an idea of the man but you also get an idea as to the power structure behind them, and of course the era in which they lived.
TLDR: Truman sucks, but I won't fault him for nuking Japan.