Could the difficulty over strategy not also reflect public trust in the USA? I found this New Yorker article fascinating; it starts with and my emphasis added:
Gallup has been polling Americans annually about their confidence in their country’s institutions—the military, the Supreme Court, Congress, the Presidency, organized religion, the health-care establishment, and public schools, among others. Over all, the project describes a collapse in trust over time, even though the surveys started amid the disillusionment of Watergate and the failed war in Vietnam. In 1973, more than four in ten Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress. This year, the figure was twelve per cent. Trust in churches and other religious institutions has fallen from sixty-five per cent to forty-one per cent in the same period. Confidence in public schools has dropped from fifty-eight per cent to thirty-six per cent. The loss of faith in the “medical system” has been particularly dramatic—a decline from eighty per cent in 1975 to thirty-seven per cent this year. There are a few exceptions to the broad slide. Confidence in the police has held steady at just above fifty per cent. Confidence in the military has increased, from fifty-eight per cent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War to seventy-two percent this year.
Link:https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily...p-relies-upon?

I had not seen such figures on the decline in trust in public and other institutions for the USA.

There is a recent opinion poll on trust in the professions here and that found 'Government Ministers and politicians are again the least trusted', with 19% trust Ministers and 17% trust politicians more generally. Alas the armed forces are not included and I would expect trust in them to be high.
Link:https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/politicians-remain-least-trusted-profession-britain