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America’s ‘low tolerance’ for war casualties is a myth
...“The American public will rarely tolerate large numbers of U.S. casualties in military operations.”

If this assessment contains a kernel of truth, it is because, as Christopher Gelpi and Peter Feaver detail in their recent book, “Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force,” the public takes its cues from above. Hence, when leaders telegraph the message that America’s sons and daughters are dying for nothing — as Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton did — there follows an understandable reluctance to place those sons and daughters in harm’s way. This is why it’s so important that President Bush broadcast his determination in Iraq.

After last week’s attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted the United States would not be “run out” of Iraq. In the past Bush has said that those who believe attacks will drive us from Iraq “don’t understand what they’re talking about.” But the message that America means to stay the course must be repeated, daily, in televised addresses and on the stump, and much more vocally than it has been thus far. To do anything less, to advertise America’s fears as if they were virtues, not only emboldens the likes of Osama bin Laden and Iraqi terrorists — it drains America’s will to resist them.