An army at war, but a nation not. That was George Bush’s great failure. He refused to take the nation to war. In 2005, instead of pushing the war to a conclusion, he spent his capital taking on social security reform. At NO time did he connect the two. He never said, we must fix this fiscal mess, or at sometime down the road, we cannot no longer conduct ths “ long war.” This is the same guns AND butter approach taken by Lyndon Johnson. And in 1968, it was a much a matter of liquidity that drove Johnson to capitulate as it was the backlash from Tet.
I agree with this. If "the fate of Western civilization is at stake!", as I'm reminded by various messages here on FR, then gear up like it, while also showing the appropriate abhorrence of war that helps make it short and overwhelmingly decisive. Otherwise it comes off as hyperbole - the sort of "go team!" sentiment that fades quickly when things turn sour, or the "phone me at the mall and tell me how the game went" non-chalance that does not put steel in the spine of folks who will need to carry water for the battle.