Bloodied but unbowed

It is an item of faith that the American public will not tolerate casualties of war. Blame Vietnam or, as strategist Edward Luttwak argued, consider it the fate of every advanced society that is destined to grow too soft to sacrifice its youth on the battlefield. No matter what the cause, the belief that the United States is unwilling to shed its own blood has influenced the thinking of a generation of American leaders and their foreign adversaries.

It sounds good, and may even match with recent experience, but the theory is not true. Opinion surveys routinely show that the US public is ready to fight and to make sacrifices - even the ultimate one - for their country. Failure to appreciate that fact encourages politicians to shy away from the truth; it yields the delusions and half-truths that appear to have guided US decision-making in the war against Iraq, and the tactical mistakes that occurred in Afghanistan.

The idea that Americans will not fight for a cause has its origins in the Vietnam war and the social protest it generated. The war bitterly divided American society and the wounds remain fresh just below the surface. A military scarred by that domestic conflict responded with a policy of marshalling overwhelming force against opponents, both to scare adversaries and to deter adventurism by US politicians. An offshoot of the approach was a seeming unwillingness to tolerate casualties in conflict for fear that they would erode the domestic consensus behind the war effort. The massive bombing campaigns that made best use of US technological prowess looked, from another perspective, a lot like a fear of getting bloodied.

Other incidents contributed to that warped perception. Some enemies took heart from US withdrawals after the suicide bombing of the marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, which claimed 241 lives, and the deaths of 18 US rangers in Somalia a decade later. The US navy's refusal to land a ship in Haiti when it was greeted by dockside protests only confirmed that it had gone 'soft'.

That history led to miscalculation. Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic studied the military strategy and bought into the conventional wisdom. He considered the massive airpower arrayed against him as an empty threat, a sign that Nato was unwilling to fight on the ground. He dared the US to attack - and he lost. Newsweek reports that Saddam Hussein used the same logic in 1991 and this year. He, too, figured wrong.

Osama bin Laden has taunted Americans, claiming that they, unlike his forces, have no stomach for war, and that will assure him of victory. No doubt, those views were confirmed by the US strategy during the battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taleban. There, the US relied on local fighters as proxies and, as a result, hundreds of al-Qaeda soldiers escaped. The reluctance of the American leadership to put their soldiers' lives at risk has encouraged the enemies to view the US as a paper tiger.

What is truly odd is that bin Laden's thinking is echoed in the views of American elites. Like him, they believe that the US public has no stomach for bloodshed and that a small number of casualties would reduce or even eliminate public support for a military operation.

They are wrong. The American public is not so fickle, and its support for military operations is not so fragile. One study concluded that if the public supports an operation in the first place and believes it is likely to succeed, then casualties will not have a demonstrable effect on their thinking. That was confirmed by an ABC News poll taken last month that showed overwhelming support for the US presence in Iraq, even as casualties mount.

The implications of this 'resolve' go beyond a willingness to fight. It means that US politicians do themselves and the country a disservice when they do not honestly explain the reasons to go to war or what the consequences might be. President George W. Bush has been blamed for sugar-coating the conflict in Iraq, creating false reasons to fight and failing to admit its real cost. The failure to face facts, no matter how unpleasant, ensures that when reality does intrude, the debate will focus on that failure rather than a situation that demands a response - a dangerous distraction at a time when the nation can least afford it. Americans are ready to fight for a cause, but they must also believe in the government that sends them to battle and demands that they make sacrifices.

Brad Glosserman is director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based think-tank [email protected]