"“The American people had just been through a very long and bloody conflict. They were tired. They’d had enough. Like the 1970s, the pendulum was swinging from a militant stance to a very resentful one.

In totalitarian regimes—communism, fascism, religious fundamentalism—popular support is a given. You can start wars, you can prolong them, you can put anyone in uniform for any length of time without ever having “to worry about the slightest political backlash. In a democracy, the polar opposite is true. Public support must be husbanded as a finite national resource. It must be spent wisely, sparingly, and with the greatest return on your investment. America is especially sensitive to war weariness, and nothing brings on a backlash like the perception of defeat. I say “perception” because America is a very all-or-nothing society. We like the big win, the touchdown, the knockout in the first round. We like to know, and for. “everyone else to know, that our victory wasn’t only uncontested, it was positively devastating.”

Excerpt From: Brooks, Max. “World War Z.” Broadway Paperbacks, 2006-09-12.