The extent to which combat casualties influence the public's
support for war is one of the most frequently and fiercely debated
subjects in current American life and has cast an enormous shadow
over both the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The common
assumption, based largely on U.S. experience in past wars, is that
the public is in some way casualty averse or casualty shy, and that
as losses increase its support for a war will inexorably decline.
Yet this assumption has been adopted as conventional wisdom without
any awareness of one of the most important dimensions of the issue:
how has the public become aware of the casualties sustained during
particular wars? To what extent has the government tried to
manipulate or massage the figures? When and why have these official
figures been challenged by opportunistic political opponents or
aggressive scoop-seeking reporters? As Steven Casey demonstrates,
at key moments in most wars what the public actually receives is
not straightforward and accurate casualty totals, but an enormous
amount of noise based on a mixture of suppression, suspicion, and
speculation. This book aims to correct this gap in information by
showing precise what casualty figures the government announced
during its various wars, the timing of these announcements, and any
spin officials may have placed upon these, using a range of
hitherto untapped primary documents. Among the nuggets he has
uncovered is that during World War I the media depended on Axis
figures and that the Army and Navy did not announce casualty
figures for an entire year during World War II. Organized
chronologically, the book addresses the two world wars, the limited
wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the recent conflicts that are part
of the War on Terror. Using sources such as the private military
command papers of Generals Patton, MacArthur, and Westmoreland, and
previously unopened New York Times archives, it offers the first
analysis of how the U.S. government has publicized combat
casualties during these wars, and how these official announcements
have been debated and disputed by other voices in the polity. Casey
discusses factors such as changes of presidential administration,
the improvement of technology, the sending of war correspondents to
cover multiple conflicts, and the increasing ability to identify
bodies. Casey recreates the complicated controversies that have
surrounded key battles, and in doing so challenges the simplicity
of the oft-repeated conventional wisdom that "as casualties mount,
support decreases. " By integrating military and political history,
he presents a totally new interpretation of U.S. domestic
propaganda since 1917, filling a major gap left by a spate of
recent books. Finally, it provides a fresh and engaging new
perspective on some of the biggest battles in recent American
history, including the Meuse-Argonne, D-Day, the Battle of the
Bulge, China's intervention in the Korean War, the Tet Offensive,
and the recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book should
speak to the military, political, and media history markets, and it
should also reach a wider audience that is debating contemporary
casualty figures.
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