Oct 02, 2009 — See National Public Radio
President Obama is weighing whether to send more troops to Afghanistan — even as polls show support for the war declining.
Generally, when war casualties go up, public support goes down. That's been the case with the three most significant wars since World War II: Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. And it is the case now with Afghanistan, where American casualties in July, August and September are the highest since the war began. But Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says the link between casualties and support is not inevitable:
"Americans have shown over their history that they can suffer casualties and, in fact, large casualties. But if a war drags on for a long period of time, American strategy isn't clear and it looks endless, then you have a real problem."
