When the National Election Study began asking about trust in government in 1958, about three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time. Trust in government began eroding during the 1960s, amid the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the decline continued in the 1970s with the Watergate scandal and worsening economic struggles. Confidence in government recovered in the mid-1980s before falling again in the mid-1990s. But as the economy grew in the late 1990s so too did confidence in government. Public trust reached a three-decade high shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but declined quickly thereafter. Since 2007, the share saying they can trust the government always or most of the time has not surpassed 30%.
The European theater was influenced strongly by tank warfare on the plains of Europe. By contrast, the Pacific theater offerred very little in the way of open spaces. Fighting in the Pacific was much more reliant on infantry and was done in jungle to a large extent. In addition, the enemy was very different.
Truman moved the US and the UN from fighting a war for a limited aim to waging a war for an unlimited political objective. He changed the political objective. Thus, he changed the nature of the war. ... Truman later insisted in his memoirs that everything he did in Korea was to prevent a Third World war.
