Did the Iraq war have a body bag effect?

摘要

Did mounting troop casualties during the Iraq War tum the American public against the conflict?Analyzing public opinion data from over 400 public polls during the first six years of the war,this article attempts to identify whether there was a "body bag effect" in play. We create a multivariatemodel that tests a number of potential hypotheses including cumulative and marginal troopcasualty as well as death milestone effects. We find that cumulative casualties provide a betterexplanation for the decline in public support than marginal casualties during the Iraq War. Contraryto the findings from the Korean and Vietnam Wars, this holds true during both periods of escalationand de-escalation.