ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the lessons Congress and the American public took from Vietnam and how that led to a change in attitudes towards military intervention in particular in the developing world. The change in Congressional mood was to a certain extent driven by the general disillusionment of the American public with the Vietnam War. The limited patience of the American people affected all Nixon's Vietnam strategies from 1969 through 1973. By spring of 1968, a majority of Americans thought that getting involved in Vietnam had been a mistake. Mueller's argument is that there is a direct statistical relationship between public support for any of these wars and increases in American casualties. The work of Bruce Jentleson on the attitudes of the American public towards the use of force in the post-Vietnam era could be seen as supporting Kull and Destler.
