To expand their control over the war power, presidents and their aides go to great lengths to explain to Congress and the public that what they are doing is not what they are doing. When President Harry Truman went to war against North Korea in 1950 without coming to Congress for authority, he was asked at a news conference if the nation was at war. He responded: “We are not at war.” A reporter inquired if it would be more correct to call the military operations “a police action under the United Nations.” Truman quickly agreed: “That is exactly what it amounts to.”
There are many precedents for being duplicitous with words and a price to be paid for it. Korea became “Truman’s war.” In August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson told the nation about a “second attack” in the Gulf of Tonkin, a claim that was doubted at the time and we now know was false. Johnson used stealth and deception to escalate the war, forever damaging his presidency and domestic agenda.
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