Collateral Damage In Iraq and Capital Punishment in the U.S.: How the Public Makes Sense of Extreme Violence and Death

Collateral Damage in Iraq and Capital Punishment in the U.S.: How the Public Makes Sense of Extreme Violence and Death This dissertation investigates the tendencies, attitudes, beliefs, ideologies, and narratives that citizens in the Pacific Northwest have in regard to innocent loss of life in war and in the American criminal justice system. The project serves as a frontal analysis of recent scholarship regarding attitudes toward casualty tolerance by political scientists Peter Feaver, Chris Gelpi, and Jason Reifler (FGR). FGR focus on debunking the `myth' that the American public is `casualty phobic' and suffers from the `Vietnam syndrome.' FGR's research focuses heavily on American soldier casualties, whereas my project shines a light on gauging public opinion on the deaths of innocent civilians in wars. I argue that their model of predicting casualty tolerance--based solely on the use of survey data--is woefully inept and lacks important contributions from social psychology, sociology and personality theories in fostering a deeper understanding of explaining varying levels of casualty tolerance by individuals who are attitudinally ambivalent. I also extend the definition of collateral damage to include innocent loss of life in the criminal justice system by individuals put to death for crimes not committed. The study implores two methods, surveys and in-depth interviews, in order to better understand attitudes toward `collateral damage' or innocent loss of life. Three new survey scales are introduced: a 14-item `Collateral Damage Tolerance Scale for War' (CDTSW), a 10-item `Collateral Damage Tolerance Scale for Death Penalty' (CDTSDP), and a 15-item Islamophobia Scale. In contemporary American politics the importance of the swing voter cannot be overstated. This study gives primacy to understanding in a more direct way what middle-scores think about innocent loss of life in war and in the criminal justice system. The foundation of the study is a Frankfurt School approach that highlights the following: ...