Steven Casey. When Soldiers Fall: How Americans Have Confronted Combat Losses from World War I to Afghanistan.

Abstract

Evoking military theorist Carl von Clausewitz's famous dictum on war and politics, When Soldiers Fall: How Americans Have Confronted Combat Losses from World War I to Afghanistan proposes that wartime casualties, like war itself, have often served as a continuation of political intercourse in twentieth-century conflicts. In fact, Steven Casey proposes we should consider casualties suffered during modern American wars as narratives both constructed and managed for political purposes. Such an argument is as sobering as it is persuasive. Casey builds his structural framework around three broad themes. First, he stresses how American presidents have treaded carefully in persuading the nation to fight. Casey, the author of an earlier work on public opinion in World War II, notes that during the early years of the war Franklin D. Roosevelt “often fretted that the public remained casualty sensitive” (p. 51). Lyndon Johnson similarly approached Vietnam hoping to avoid a debate over prospective American losses in Southeast Asia. Casey reinforces this argument by highlighting Richard Nixon's “‘pointed reference’ to how much lower casualties were compared to Johnson's last year in office” (p. 183). Likewise, George W. Bush is presented as a commander-in-chief reluctant to discuss casualty issues during the Iraq war. Casey suggests that since World War I American presidents have been less concerned about the human tragedy of U.S. losses abroad than the political ramifications of those losses. Casualties enthuse far less personal sympathy than electoral anxiety.