Quote:I agree with the second part of your statement, but the first part, about public opinion being moot is not correct and is not borne out by history, as I have stated and as you have ignored.   We live in a democratic republic.   The Congress and the President, who is the Commander in Chief, are elected.   If you ignore public opinion, you are ignoring the risk of having Congress cut off your funding, which happened during the Vietnam War, and you risk having the President replaced by someone who decides the war is not worth it.   You simply cannot fight a war and ignore public opinion.   If public opinion turns against the war, you lose the war, or at the very least have your military efforts terminated.   Public opinion can cut the legs out from under your military effort.   You are describing a police action.  A declaration of war is approved by congress.  Allow me to clarify, once a declaration of war is declared and approved by congress it is time for the military to do their job.  Politicians need to get out of the way and stand unified behind those in uniform.   
You do realize the last time an actual declaration of war was issued was in 1941 by FDR. 

 

Public opinion turned against the Vietnam War and that was what caused our military efforts over there to be truncated.   Until Sherman took Atlanta, Lincoln was all but assured of defeat in the election of 1864, and his opponent, McClellan, campaigned on a platform of negotiating an end to the Civil War.   Those are just two examples of how public opinion can shape success or failure in a war.   Vietnam was a police action not a war.  The Civil War in my humble opinion should be excluded from this discussion.  When you are at war with yourself half the participants are against you to begin with but I get your point.  I just don't think if fits this narrative. 


 

You simply cannot say that once you launch a war, public opinion is moot.   To say that is to ignore the fact that we live in a democratic republic where public opinion determines all our policies.   All our policies are determined by public opinion through elections, and anyone who ignores public opinion when prosecuting a war is very foolish.   <b><i>Again I am talking about war and not police actions (which I vehemently disagree with) so yes I can say that public opinion is moot.  That was considered and weighed prior to approval by congress.</i></b>

I think you are missing the point.  These police actions declared by a president without the proper vetting by congress that an actual declaration of war gets need to end.  These police actions breed the dissent that you speak of.  They spawn those great quotes such as "I was for it before I was against it".  You can waiver all you want on a police action.  A declaration of war, not so much.

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