The wonderful analysis below consists of excerpts from Lieutenant Colonel Richard A. Lacquement, Jr.'s paper, "THE CASUALTY-AVERSION MYTH" (2004).

It seems that we are entering a new phase in the history of warfare. What this means, essentially, is that people are no longer as willing as they once were to sacrifice their lives for a country. 

The "nightmare of history" that I've been writing about endlessly was based, essentially, on the willingness of human beings to sacrifice their lives in the name of a nation-state. 

The term "violence" (e. g., in the case of Steven Pinker, for example) has been thrown about promiscuously and without rigor.

The essence of the "violence" that constitutes warfare (collective violence) grows out of the sacrificial dynamic: willingness of states and leaders and combatants to do violence against themselves.

Focusing especially on the First World War and German participation in the Second World War, we can see that what was involved, fundamentally, was the willingness of human beings to "give their lives" for their nations.

"Violence," self-sacrifice and devotion to the nation-state...were one and the same.

My mission--helping people to "awaken from the nightmare of history"--consists of revealing the sacrificial dynamic lying beneath the "violence" of warfare.

It seems, however, that without reading my books and papers, people--at least in Europe and the United States--came to certain realizations about warfare on their own.

"We don't need another hero" (Tina Turner): The end of sacrificail death as the essence the historical process.

Best regards,

Richard Koenigsberg

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AMERICAN CASUALTY SENSITIVITY
 

Are the American people in fact reluctant to risk lives? In a superficial and unhelpful sense, the American public is always reluctant to risk lives, particularly if there is some other reasonable way to accomplish objectives. No one wants casualties.
 

The wellspring of this conventional wisdom is generally understood to be the Vietnam War, as reinforced by experiences in Lebanon (1983) and Somalia (1993). The tremendous efforts by civilian and military leaders to minimize casualties in other operations—the Persian Gulf War (1991), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995), and Kosovo (1999)—can be read as a reaction to the public’s purported low tolerance for casualties.

Manifestations of this conventional wisdom are many and widespread—the “Vietnam syndrome,” the “Dover test,” the “CNN effect,” part of the Weinberger/Powell doctrine, the concept of “post-heroic warfare,” and a social equity effect attributed to the absence of American civilian elites and their children from military service.
 

The “Vietnam syndrome” is commonly understood as a general reticence among Americans to use military force abroad as a result of negative lessons of the Vietnam experience. It is “that revulsion at the use of military power that afflicted our national psyche for decades after our defeat.”

It is a comprehensive generalization about the American public’s unwillingness to continue to support U.S. foreign military efforts, particularly as casualties rise. This aspect of the Vietnam syndrome relates casualty aversion to the idea that public support for military operations in Vietnam declined because of the human costs of the war.

Senator John Glenn’s “Dover test” refers to the American public’s assumed response to American service people returning to the United States in flag-draped coffins. This oft-repeated image symbolizes the cost in casualties of American military operations.
 

In an interesting response to its presumed visceral effect, the Department of Defense has prohibited media coverage of such events since 1989: “There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Dover AFB [Air Force Base] or Ramstein AFB [in Germany], to include interim stops.”

In a sense, this provides an official endorsement of the presumption that casualties have a powerful effect on the public. The “CNN effect” refers broadly to the purported impact of certain types of visual images, to include American casualties, when broadcast on the news. Like the Dover test, it suggests that visual images of casualties will elicit an immediate response from the public.

Its various formulations convey the idea that the public can respond precipitately to gut-wrenching depictions of human suffering, not only military casualties but starving children and other civilian victims of war. This dynamic is also assumed to induce a similar visceral response to such dramatic pictures as those of the body of an American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993.
 

“Post-heroic warfare” is the idea that the scope of casualties resulting from the clash of armies at close quarters is no longer tolerable to the American public. Edward Luttwak asserts that America is “a nation intolerant of casualties;” he relates this to the decreasing size of American families in the post–World War II era. Luttwak believes that there exists a powerful unwillingness among Americans to permit military operations that might endanger their children.
 

There are numerous examples of the perception by foreigners that the United States is unwilling to risk casualties. This perception has been a factor in the considerations of the nation’s enemies. Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Gulf War, Slobodan Milosevic before the Kosovo War in 1999, and Osama Bin Laden and al-Qa‘ida generally in 2001 all appear to have had great confidence that the United States lacked the moral courage to face a deadly military confrontation. This assurance made them less susceptible to diplomatic maneuvers or military threats. They seem to have considered the prospect of U.S. military action, particularly the use of ground troops, a bluff.
 

During the first Gulf war, it appears that the central element of Saddam’s strategy was to keep his forces in place during the air war and wait for the ground attack, when, he believed, they would be able to inflict massive casualties and therefore cause the United States to give up. “Saddam Hussein clearly believed that his greatest chance of success lay in inflicting the maximum number of casualties on coalition forces through close combat.”
 

In the 2003 war, the apparent Iraqi plan to draw the coalition into an urban battle in Baghdad seemed to have presumed that the Iraqi army would cause unacceptable U.S. casualties. The guerrilla-style war that still continues in Iraq, whether representing the organized resistance of remnants of the former regime or external terrorist groups, also seems based on the premise that simply inflicting casualties on American forces will break the will of the American public and thereby lead to withdrawal.
          

The supposed American glass jaw with respect to casualties is often connected to the battle in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, in 1993. In another incident that seemed to reinforce this point, Haitian thugs prevented the USS Harlan County (LST 1196) docking and offloading troops in Port-au-Prince just a week after the battle in Mogadishu.

Osama Bin Laden was to cite Somalia as a reason to expect to be able to force the United States to withdraw from the Middle East. In his 1996 declaration of war on the United States, Osama Bin Laden dismissed the idea that the United States would be able to sustain support for a military response if it suffered casualties.
 

• Your most disgraceful case was in Somalia, where after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousand American soldiers into Somalia. However, when tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you.
   
• Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge, but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear.

To Bin Laden, the fact that the bombings in 1998 of two U.S. embassies in Africa elicited only cruise missile attacks in retaliation was further confirmation of this weakness. Ultimately, the planners of the suicide attacks launched against the USS Cole and then the World Trade Center and Pentagon appear to have relied heavily on the presumption of acute casualty sensitivity by Americans.
 

In an October 2001, al-Qa‘ida videotape (released just as the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan commenced), Osama Bin Laden’s lieutenant, Ayman Zawahri, expressed a conviction that the American will to fight would weaken quickly after a few casualties. The United States would retreat, just as it had “fled in panic from Lebanon and Somalia.”