Are We at War? What Do We Want? And Do We Want to Win?

Abstract

There is no such thing as a little war for a great Nation.Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington ( 1838)Are We at War?On June 29, 1950, President Harry S. Truman held an afternoon press conference where he took questions about the recently erupted war in Korea. Four days before, Kim Il-Sung's Communist North Korean regime had launched a surprise offensive designed to conquer American-supported South Korea. Within forty-eight hours Truman had decided to commit US forces to the fight. General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of US forces in the Far East, received orders to "throw the North Koreans out of South Korea." Republican Senator Robert Taft agreed with Truman's decision, but not the president's refusal to seek Congressional approval for taking the US to war. "If the incident is permitted to go by without protest," Taft wrote, "we would have finally terminated for all time the right of Congress to declare war, which is granted to Congress alone by the Constitution of the United States." Others echoed Taft's views. Truman ignored them all and began pulling together a United Nationssponsored coalition to counter what many Western observers saw as the first move in a possible Soviet offensive aimed at the West. A reporter at the press conference prodded Truman: "Everybody is asking in this