From the Korean War to the current conflict in Iraq, Paying the Human Costs of War examines the ways in which the American public decides whether to support the use of military force. Contrary to the conventional view, the authors demonstrate that the public does not respond reflexively and solely to the number of casualties in a conflict. Instead, the book argues that the public makes reasoned and reasonable cost-benefit calculations for their continued support of a war based on the justifications for it and the likelihood it will succeed, along with the costs that have been suffered in casualties. Of these factors, the book finds that the most important consideration for the public is the expectation of success. If the public believes that a mission will succeed, the public will support it even if the costs are high. When the public does not expect the mission to succeed, even small costs will cause the withdrawal of support. Providing a wealth of new evidence about American attitudes toward military conflict, Paying the Human Costs of War offers insights into a controversial, timely, and ongoing national discussion.

Excerpt from The Human Costs of the War Why doesn't Europe function? This, in substance, is the question which puzzled America has been asking all through the last half of 1919. Why must 1919 go down in history, as M. Brieux says, as "a lost year"? With huge excess stores of food and products, why does trade delay? Why does foreign exchange jump up and down like the temperature of a "flu" patient? When Mr. Hoover returned last July he was quoted as saying that, unless Europe began promptly to produce, there would be starvation in unheard-of proportions this winter. Now we hear that it is at hand. Did they deliberately choose starvation, or did they drift into it, or is there still another and perhaps a more valid reason? Production implies producers. Who and where and in what condition are the producers of Europe? We hear that Belgium and England are making real progress toward production. Has this any relation to the fact that their military losses, especially those of Belgium, were much less in proportion than those of some other countries? For five and a half years we have scarcely opened a morning paper without reading a head-line telling of the sufferings of some new group of victims of the war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The long wars in Iraq & Afghanistan have cost the U.S. in many ways. For the U.S. mil., the human toll has been profound. The damage to our internat. reputation has been severe. And the full econ. costs of the war to the Amer. taxpayers & the overall U.S. economy go well beyond even the immense fed. budget costs. The ¿hidden costs¿ of the Iraq war include: the ongoing drain on U.S. econ. growth created by Iraq-related borrowing, the disruptive effects of the conflict on world oil markets, the future care of our injured vets, repair costs for the mil., & other undisclosed costs. This report estimates the total costs of the long war in Iraq to the Amer. economy as a whole. A change in course would bring substantial econ. savings to our country. Illus.

In this riveting and suspenseful New York Times best-selling book, Adam Hochschild brings WWI to life as never before... World War I was supposed to be the “war to end all wars.” Over four long years, nations around the globe were sucked into the tempest, and millions of men died on the battlefields. To this day, the war stands as one of history’s most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. To End All Wars focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war’s critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Many of these dissenters were thrown in jail for their opposition to the war, from a future Nobel Prize winner to an editor behind bars who distributed a clandestine newspaper on toilet paper. These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain’s most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other. Hochschild forces us to confront the big questions: Why did so many nations get so swept up in the violence? Why couldn’t cooler heads prevail? And can we ever avoid repeating history?