Which is why the Feaver theory is wrong .  .  .  .  Bruce W. Jentleson

I don't understand.

Feaver's argument (based on statistics whose accuracy and interpretive value I'm unqualified to judge) seems straightforward:  Whatever morons came up with the idea that Americans wouldn't accept substantial wartime casualties were, as morons generally are, wrong.

Appears correct to me. 

.  .  .  I think that the public's willingness to stay in Iraq will increase if Bush demonstrates progress.  Chris Gelpi

Is anyone going to argue with this statement?  Is it anything more than a commonplace?

As ludicrous as it may seem, Bush has got his approvals up 3%-5% to 40% since he started his Victory campaign and I've read that Republicans don't think he is as radioactive.  He'll get another bump when he reduces the number of troops to their pre-election levels.  And I believe he will make additional troop withdrawals of modest proportion during the 2006 election season.  Whether it's true or not (it won't be), he'll say it's because as the Iraqis stand up we can stand down.  He'll also continue to conflate 911 and the 'war on terror' with the Iraq War.

Bush is also offloading the counter-ingurgency operations against Sunnis onto Shia and Kurd death squads which also should reduce the American death rate.  A few months ago, Seymour Hirsch was saying there was talk of imposing the Salvador option.  Bush could even order the occupation forces not to engage in counter-insurgency operations and send the troops back to their bases during the 2006 election campaign, which again should reduce the American death rate.  The recent revelations of Iraqi misteatment and torture of insurgents certainly seems not to have created much of a stir with the American people.

Bush could also gain ground if the dissatisfaction Shias have with the current Islamic government for their continuing squalor and the sqabbling with the ruling of the 3 main Shia Islamist parties results in a more secular Shia government after the parliamentary elections with Allawi's party (which the US is pouring money into) and other secular Shia groups (Chalabi) are able to cobble together some sort of popular front coalition government.

In reality, of course, chaos on the ground will continue to be esculating with more Iraqi deaths and more instability. 

As disgusting as it is, Bush's Victory strategy may get him through the 2006 elections without losing control of either house which is all he's really after.

This is why Bush refuses to set any targets or clear, measurable goals: at some point, he'll define whatever the status quo happens to be as "success," and that will be that.

Here we have a foreign policy that is built around an unprovoked attack on a foreign country followed by a nation building experiment.  The attack is opposed by some people, mostly democrats.  The nation building is opposed by others, mostly republicans. The opponents to the attack have taken their position.  The opponents to the nation building are still in disarray.  They have been assured that the $$$ for this blunder will be passed on to someone else. Now you can see why the perception of success in nation building is so important to bush.  

Several years ago, I read a very good article (in Foreign Affairs, if memory serves) by Edward Luttwack. 

In this article, he attributed the low willingness of the American public to accept casualities to demographic factors: specifically, to smaller family sizes than in previous eras.

He argued that media images, such as the "stream of coffins with flags draped over them" that the Bush administration has prevented us from seeing, do not drive opposition to casualities.  The Soviet Union's state-controlled mendia had no such images during Afghanistan, and there was no democratic accountability there, but there was tremendous resistance to casualties.

Instead, the theory went that in previous eras, families were larger thanks to the needs of an agricultural lifestyle.  In a world of big families, losing, say, one of ten children to a military conflict was, while tragic, not catastrophic.  Today, small families are the norm in industrialized societies.  In a world of small families, losing your only child to war *is* catastrophic.  Therefore, parents exert pressure on their children not to serve in conflict.

This theory may also explain why red states are more  casualty-tolerant, since people in red states supposedly have bigger families.

If Luttwack's theory is true, and I see no evidence from Iraq so far that it isn't, then the achievement of milestones, however impressive, is unlikely to stem growing opposition to the war.  I think this article is particularly important because Luttwack is a conservative realist in foreign affairs. 

This does not, of course, translate into a "withdraw immediately" approach, which would be extremely foolish from a geopolitical perspective.

Re: Underestimation of anticipated Costs---------
That may be; however the more serious problem has been the type of analysis which led us to the intervention. Little in the way of anything systematic. Just a lot of ideological hubris passing itself off as necessity, followed a grand finale of explosive defenses and egos. 

In our book Choosing Your Battles, Peter Feaver and I address the Luttwak hypothesis - and to some extent we do in our current research.

We find little evidence to support his claim.  Specifically, survey respondents who have children do not express any lower tolerance for casualties.  Respondents with family connections to the military express somewhat lower tolerance for casualties before an operation *starts* but once the operation is underway military families tend to be among the most supportive of continuing to fight (Cindy Sheehan notwithstanding).  We think this is because those connected to the military are especially focused on making the mission successful.  

 There is also little evidence to suggest that images of flag draped coffins per se have any impact on public attitudes.  In this sense, Bush is needlessly fearful of such photos.  The public is quite aware of how many soliders have been killed in Iraq regardless of the photos.  They do care about how many casualties there are, but photos and video do not seem to matter much.

I think the post really misses the most basic problem that Bush and the Feaver theory face: the realities of the situation in Iraq.

The true difficulty for Bush is not to convince the public in the short run that we're doing well in Iraq, and that our goals are valuable and achievable. It is rather the problem of maintaining that notion in the face of overwhelming evidence of a quagmire. Really, does any sensible person expect that the insurgency will in any way diminish after the elections, or that signs of harmony will suddenly break out?

Yes, Bush may get a bump after the elections; he's gotten any number of bumps since the war began. But look at the numbers. Those bumps are smaller each time around, and last a shorter period of time. This is the underlying reality of the public reaction to Bush's attempts to spin the war in Iraq. If there's anything different in the approach the Bush WH is taking now, it certainly has escaped me.

Now, if the 2006 elections were a month from now, or if Bush only had a month or two left in his term, this might be a good strategy, achieving a desirable short term effect. But nothing like this is at issue. The bump will come and go, for the same reasons all the other bumps have done so. Indeed, each time Bush makes a promise of success and we see failure instead, his credibility seems to suffer only all the more, as, again, his approval numbers over the years strongly indicate.

And when Bush once again returns to his previous state in approval, he will have absolutely nothing to show for his effort at spin, and his lame duckness will be every bit as bad or worse than it was before.

Just to follow up my post, consider this point from the original post,

Let's assume for the sake of analysis that it is not just this, that the administration genuinely believes that its policy is succeeding and that it will succeed even more if the public just hangs in there and stays that course.

You see, this misses the point, I believe. It's NOT a question of the sincerity of what the Bush administration believes. That is far from an adequate assumption here. I would claim that the ONLY thing which at this stage could perceptibly affect the public's reaction to the situation in Iraq in the long run is different facts on the ground in Iraq.

The fatal political mistake that the Bush WH has made over and over again is the notion that the realities of governance and policy fundamentally don't matter; only the spin matters. That illusion was sustainable for only too long due to the disturbing influence of the 9/11 effect, but political gravity once again is fully operational.

And the facts on the ground in Iraq, far more than anything else, will forever doom the Bush WH and the Feaver theory.

It appears that this Administration lurches from issue to issue, first war, then national security, then social security, then gay marriage and so on.  Iraq seems to have remained a problem because it refuses to wither away as an issue as gay marriage or social security reform.
However, it does seem that the current Administration took what may be one of the best military machines in history and squandered and diddled it away.  Recruitment is down as it is one thing to donate one weekend a month and another to die in exchange for funding for a college education.  Also, the apparent mendacity of this Administration has eroded support from the hometown folks.  Finally, it appears from a perusal of the casualty lists, that many of the casualties are noncoms.  
A military cannot be successful without a cadre of NCOs who are committed to the military as a career and who have the experience in leadership to lead men into battle.  I seem to remember that in WW2, the average age of an NCO was 27 while in VN it was 20.  In WW2, the NCO corps consisted of enough combat veterans to maintain group cohesion while in VN, the practice of rotating individuals instead of units into combat situations failed to develop the necessary group cohesion.

It seems the major longterm damage has been to the military.  We have a volunteer military which many will no longer volunteer for.  We have units that are looking towards a third tour or even a fourth tour of duty.  We have individuals who were slated for retirement who were held on active duty for the indefinite future. At least in WW2, there was no question that each soldier was in it "for the duration".  Finally, it seems our KIAs and WIAs are disproportionately NCOs which means with each death or service ending injury, we are losing the years of training and experience which will take us years to replace.

The possibility is that the military will enter a phase much like it did following VN of disillusionment and disgruntlement.  I may have not expressed it well but can anyone doubt that Rumsfield has taken a very good military and chewed it up like raw hamburger?         &
nbsp; 

The complexities of Mogadishu -- a strictly limited humanitarian mission operating in a warlord controlled environment led by an undermanned army which, if we didn't get out quickly, looked like it would turn into some damn serious fighting in the damn near future -- are too great and too unique to offer much in the way of insights into the question of what will cause Americans to "demand" -- Ho Ho Ho -- an end to a war.

My position is that Americans don't decide to go to war.  Elites decide that.  After the country's at war, elites -- not to keep the war going (that's a given) but to stay in power -- must set a goal which can be as ephemeral and abstract as preserving the country's prestige or the honor of its army (see Vietnam or Dreyfuss).

The idea that Americans are casualty-shy has always been a red-herring published by right-wingers and especially, right-wingers in the military to put thhe blame for the loss of Vietnam on those whom they pejoratively call "Civilians" -- they mean all the rest of us -- and to excuse the army's abysmal performance in Vietnam.

I'll stick with my claim that the idea was, is, and if raised in the future, will be "moronic." 

A footnote re peace-keeping missions:

When Clinton pulled out of Somalia after the army took some casualties, he had the example before him of Reagan pulling out of Beirut after the Marines lost 241 men to a truck bomb and Reagan suffering no political damage.

And that despite the fact that the Beirut bombing was an example of incompetence and negligence* worse than was 9/11.

*  Six months earlier 63 people were killed across town when the same outfit -- Islamic Jihad -- truck bombed the U.S. Embassy.