I think that one explanation of the difference between the WWII model and that of Vietnam lies in the Korean War, only recently the recipient of the name of "War" and at the time a "conflict" or "police action." Part of the reason for this is (1) the fatigue the WWII generation felt at the successful ending of a maximum effort, and (2) the perceived lack of need for an all-out effort in a small and distant place. After a year or so of war there the latter attitude was grudgingly adjusted, but the idea was that we could support both a small-scale "police action" and European and domestic reconstruction simultaneously under an essentially peace economy.
The effects of that erroneous attitude are the principal complaints of veterans of that conflict - aging and inadequate supplies, inadequate ammunition - does this sound familiar? But quite in keeping with your thesis as I understand it was that from the home front's point of view this was war on a part-time basis.
Vietnam was very much entered and for a good number of years prosecuted on this basis. It takes a visible threat on the order of that posed by Nazi Germany to convince the population of the sacrifices necessary for total warfare. Neither Korea nor Vietnam was really convincing on that basis. With 9/11 the War On Terror was, War in Afghanistan was on a provisionary basis, but War in Iraq wasn't, or more properly was subject to vociferous criticism on that basis.
The difference is that in Afghanistan the 9/11 attackers enjoyed overt state-level support in terms of funding, logistics, and training. In Iraq that was not the case to anywhere near that level and was covert, and hence deniable, besides. The nature of the two interventions was entirely different from the point of view of the public and those differences were played upon, exaggerated, and exploited by those with a political stake in so doing.
What is most striking about this difference is that in the case of Afghanistan we had an identifiable opponent in a specific location; elsewhere in the WOT we have opponents who are not so readily identified who depend on the sanctuary provided under international law. The essence of proxy war by terror is to keep the threat under the threshold that would trigger open warfare. Bush moved that threshold down with respect to Iraq and infuriated an international diplomatic community who had come to depend on it. The effect is that now countries such as Iran and Syria are pressing to identify and re-establish that threshold. If it is formally codified in international law those who wish to exploit it may stay just under it and still conduct proxy warfare.
What that also does is to deny the attacked country the ability to mobilize the sort of all-out total-war effort to which your essay refers. It is warfare by slow asymmetrical dripping - I think "fourth-generation" is overstating the case but it certainly does represent the sort of lesson learned inadvertently by the communists in Korea and developed to fruition in Vietnam. In this respect 9/11 was a colossal blunder on the part of the terrorists because it threatened the very means of this warfare to exist unaddressed. A lot of liberals and internationalists liked the old rules because they knew where they stood (and how much they could get away with). A good deal of the shouting is to revert to those days, and I don't think given the nature of the new terror that the world can afford that luxury.
All IMHO and subject to vigorous debate as usual, of course...
As defined by the UN, Korea was a “police action” and involved a multi-lateral force. We didn't need a declaration of war because the UN was the belligerent power, and a congressional authorization of our participation was deemed sufficient.
It should be noted that when the Korean adventure went sour after China’s intervention, there were no anti-war demonstrations, although the country was angry enough to change parties in 1952. What kept the lid on dissent was the Cold War. We were in Korea for a much bigger reason.