America's Breaking Point?

From Wretchard, host of the Belmont club:

What would you say to the proposition that America's breaking point has been progressively declining since 1945? Looking back from the vantage of 2006, maybe the question is not why America capitulated to North Vietnam but how that generation of US politicians managed to hold out so long. Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, after six years of a conflict in which generated an average of 526 combat deaths per month for 90 months. The All-Volunteer Army and all the hi-tech weapons were in part intended to restore the freedom of initiative; to delay the onset of the breaking point at which the politicians would run, thereby making the military option available again. But for all of that, it can be argued that in the light of current experience the political breaking point actually fell, relative to Vietnam.

Osama Bin Laden's basic bet was that America's political breaking point was far too low for it to mount an effective resistance to the Jihad. Even after 9/11, even against an enemy who unlike the NVA can strike at the homeland, there are already the Dana Priests and the Mary McCarthys. So soon. So soon.