Quote: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.

 

Once again, I am just arguing with your assertion that once you get in a war, public opinion is moot. 

 

So now you've narrowed your point to include only wars that are declared by Congress.  This excludes almost all the wars we've fought in the last 100 years except for WWI and WWII.   But even if you look at only those two declared wars, you see a strong propaganda effort by the government with the purpose of maintaining pubic support.   For example, during WWII, the government commissioned people in Hollywood to put out films like "Why We Fight."   You can find that on Youtube.   This was part of a constant propaganda effort to maintain public support, because public support is vital even during a major declared war. 

 

Even in the non-democracies during those two world wars, you can see the importance of maintaining public opinion.  The Germans proposed an armistice in WWI mostly due to the fact that they were facing revolution at home and the German public had turned against the war.   The Russians paid no attention to public opinion during WWI, and as a result, public opinion turned against the Czar, forcing the Russians out of WWI.   (And the Czar got executed.)

 

During WWII, one of the highest ranking officials in the Nazi government was the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.  Goebbels told a long series of lies about how the Germans were defeating the Russians on the Eastern Front, and he did this because public support is vital during a war, even in a dictatorship.   You see the same sort of effort in Russia in WWII.   

 

This is because maintaining public opinion is vital during a war, even a major war. 

 

What you said was, once you declare war, public opinion is moot.   That is what I am arguing about.   That sentence.  

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