Quote Originally Posted by Sargent View Post
Neither am I particularly keen on putting them in charge of running a war, and I agree that their track record doesn't bode well for them getting much right. Several hundred people as CINC? Ugh. But in cases where they have stepped in to muck things up, the action was in response to a backlash from the public, and it was, in each of the cases of Vietnam and Gulf 2, after giving the Executive Branch several years to pursue its policy. In Vietnam, the American public was pretty supportive -- until Tet put the lie to the Light at the End of the Tunnel. I would submit that the American public gave this administration's policy a fair shake -- given the various lines that were coming out of the administration -- before losing patience.

That's what any administration needs to remember about the American public -- you have to be mostly on target on the level of commitment and how long it will take, and certainly don't give them false hope, because the people get very impatient when that is dashed. FDR never promised anything about WWII -- it was "for the duration," and nobody thought the duration was just about to end at any point. Possibly that's why the collective memory of the war is so positive -- given the enormity of the conflict, for the Americans it probably ended sooner than expected.

The bottom line is that managing public perception and support is a significant piece of the strategic picture in the American case. And as tempting as it is to use optimism as a means of building the right image of the policy and maintaining positive feelings towards it, it's a very risky way to go about things, because of the problems associated with dashed expectations. And in the American system, if there is not the option to dump the administration when the public loses patience with the policy or the handling thereof, the second recourse is to the Congress. Hence my strong sense of executive responsibility in such cases -- because that second option is sub-optimal.
True to a degree, but this still does not answer the question of the accountability of Congress. Who took them to task for selling South Vietnam down the drain? That's really my basic thrust with this. Once Congress steps in, any possibility of accountability disappears. I agree completely with executive responsibility, but I don't see much of a balance in Congress with a "get out of jail free" card. This is especially true with the Senate, which often has years between elections to cover their tracks.

With Word War II, one thing most people don't remember is that FDR flew in the face of public opinion by putting Europe first. One reason he didn't declare war on Germany initially is that there was little real public or Congressional support for it. It took Pearl Harbor, and Hitler's ill-advised declaration of war on the US, to give him that window.

Tet is an interesting case, and one that will be debated for many years yet. I tend to fall into the camp that feels that Tet was really a military victory for the US and SVN, even though it obviously ended up a political loss of major proportions. Tet exposed much of the VC infrastructure, and saw it destroyed in the bargain. That may not matter in the historical long run, but it's an interesting balancing factor.