사상자 회피 혹은 사상자 용인?: 이라크 전쟁에 대한 미국민 지지도 재평가 = Casualty-Aversion or Casualty-Acceptance?: Reassessing the U.S. Public`s Support for the Iraq War

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Scholars have long debated the validity of the casualty-aversion hypothesis suggested by Mueller (1973), meaning that military casualties in war increase, the public`s support for war decreases. Despite significant advancement in understanding the connection between public attitudes and war, numerous studies fail to recognize that terrorist incidents beyond the given war zone under investigation-defined as external incidents -can pose a new problem for the casualty-aversion hypothesis. However, Burk`s (1999) meaningful study shows that casualties suffered from terrorist attacks in Lebanon reinforce the public`s support for the War on Terror. Burk`s finding directly opposes the casualty-aversion hypothesis, which can newly be defined as casualty-acceptance hypothesis. Based on Burk`s finding, the central question in this study is as follows: Do external incidents such as Al-Qaeda`s terrorist attacks in Madrid and London reinforce the U.S. public`s will and therefore, they reduce public disapproval for the Iraq War, aligned with the casualty-acceptance hypothesis? The War in Afghanistan can also be associated with the Iraq War. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the impacts of these three external incidents on U.S. public support for the Iraq War in relation to the casualty-aversion and casualty-acceptance hypotheses.