Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts

摘要

Since the Vietnam War, discussions about America's involvement in combat have come to be dominated by casualty concerns. Citing Vietnam, but more especially Lebanon and Somalia, terrorist leaders and others hostile to the United States openly proclaim that America's will to fight is easily broken by inflicting casualties on its forces. Whenever combat operations occur, it is common practice now for American news outlets to feature prominently articles worrying about accumulating casualty lists and to regularly publish memorial pictures of the fallen. Policy makers and policy commentators endlessly speculate about the extent of public tolerance for foreign interventions when there is likely to be significant casualties. Even in the scholarly literature there are many opinions unconstrained by data offered about the effects casualties have on publir. support for U.S. policy.