Americans Do Not Fear Casualties: WaPo

I’m thinking that the Washington Post should require its reporters to read its own blog.

Overstating the Impact of Iraq War Casualties

I learned that the American military, the highest reaches of government and the news media all operate with a false assumption about how the American public views war casualties. Americans are NOT inherently casualty averse. What is more, according to survey data, it is NOT true that the public will only support the use of force if there are low casualties.

If it takes a trip to Duke to help them figure it out, fine. But I could have saved them some time and effort.

This isn't the conventional wisdom, so the government operates in false defensive mode and the media reports casualties as if they were the only measure of success and failure.

What these military studies reveal, however, is that the Bush administration in Afghanistan followed the same, if not even stricter, rules of engagement regarding civilian collateral damage and casualties than the Clinton administration.

This ignores the fact that screaming libs don’t scream when a Dem is in office, but it’s still an interesting point.

"If there is a purpose to casualties, Americans will hang in there," Dauber said in a telephone interview.

But in the absence of government explanation and media context, Dauber says "the lack of context becomes its own context."

The hilarious part of this blog entry is the comments section below the article. It is full of screaming libs who completely missed the point, thus, reinforcing the point.
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