Would FDR have allowed the National Security State to foment?

[DerekG]

Some leftist historians suggest that fascism had first come in America with the death of Roosevelt. I'd like to ask DUers if they agree.

It is redundant to state that the United States was at a unique juncture following the end of World War II. Through noble and ignoble efforts, fascism had been temporarily defeated. America was left with an important decision regarding its position in the world. Unlike many however, I mourn the path our government chose to take.

I place much of the blame of this on the shoulders of one of the great fools of history: Harry S. Truman. Due in no small part to his incompetance as a leader, a foreign policy that began with a justifiable effort to contain Stalin was allowed to grow into an insidious crusade against communism all the world over. His National Security Act of 1947 escalated the public's fear of communism that Republicans would soon rely on for amassing power (culminating in blaming Truman for the loss of China); as well as allowing the CIA to spawn into the dreaded organization imbued with the power to spy on the citizenry as well as its culpability in robbing over a dozen nations of its self-determinism.

To clarify, I choose to label Truman incompetant and not malevolent (an adjective I would apply to Richard Nixon). But he was captain of the ship, so to speak, and should be denounced as the wrong man for the job.

Would things have been different had Roosevelt lived? Instead of preparing America for a world-wide crusade, is it impossible to fathom that FDR would have honored the anti-colonial rhetoric he uttered in the closing years of the war? Instead of abandoning the New Deal as Truman did, would he have forged a series of programs that addressed the plight of the lower classes, perhaps a Great Society 19 years prior to the real thing? FDR was no saint, to be sure. But I feel he was far and away the best president we've had in the last century (LBJ could have taken that honor had he not chosen to begin mass-murder in Southeast Asia).

I suppose this thread is really concerned with the differences between Roosevelt and his successor.

[FDRrocks]

1. No, they wouldn't be different.

Frank was irresponsible to run for his fourth term. He didn't want to but felt he had to due to the war. He was in really bad health and generally unfit to run the nation, its what killed him.

I don't think he would've allowed this, but he ushered in the huge military that has not left us since. It was neccesary at that time, and he wasn't around to oversee its dissapation.

[knight_of_the_star]

2. Truman wasn't that bad of a President

And keep in mind at that time Stalin was running the USSR, and there is a mountain of evidence that he was planning on invading Europe as soon as Hitler hit France, assuming that the Germans and French and Brits would do a repeat of the Western Front thus allowing him to run over Eastern Europe and East Germany. THe only reason this did not happen was because Germany crushed France like an egg and it left Staling rather stunned and at a loss as to what to do. As soon as WWII was over Stalin was all too ready to start WWIII to achieve his dream of a Soviet Empire. Truman's rhetoric of containing Communism was needed in the time of Stalin, and to a lesser extent Kruschev, but after Kruschev was shown the door because of the Cuban missile crisis, that kind of stance was meaningless.

[RichM]

3. A very juicy topic...

I agree with the view that in the "unique juncture" at the end of WWII, the US, under Truman, embarked on a course that in many ways guaranteed that we'd wind up exactly where we've wound up. Along with giving birth to the CIA, the Cold War was launched, placing the US economy on a permanent war footing. The sickness of this development simply cannot be overemphasized. It made the military-industrial domination of society and politics unavoidable.

Another aspect was what we call "McCarthyism" -- which is usually dismissed as a small but unpleasant & somewhat shameful chapter in American History. In reality, it was nothing less than a purge -- very much like Stalin's Moscow Show Trials of the '30's. After the purge, the entire American political left was destroyed. It's easy to see the consequences of that, in the comatose condition of today's "liberalism."

Re: the specific personal question you raise, about whether it would have been different had FDR lived longer: First of all, I think this is a less juicy question than simply appreciating how crucial the Truman years were, & how the course that was embarked upon really guaranteed disaster in the long run (even though it took decades for this to become truly apparent, & most people still don't see it).

But my guess about FDR is that he would not have been able to resist the forces that converted the US to an economy wholly dependent on military spending & anticommunist ideology. It's just hard for me to imagine it, because he tired badly in his latest years, & for him to have resisted those formidable forces would be to demand of him that he behave with all the vigor of 1935, at a time when he was half dead.

[RichM]

4. This topic deserves another go-round.

:kick: