Citation

Wasinski C. Int. Polit. Sociol. 2008; 2(2): 113-127.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, International Studies Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1749-5687.2008.00039.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

According to some researchers, the public acceptance of military intervention is conditional upon the minimization of military mortality. Once a threshold of military death is crossed, political leaders are obliged to limit their ambitions. This research proposes to consider the idea of threshold as mythical. Instead, it suggests focusing at the presence of the ghosts the dead American soldiers in the public sphere and the way they are ``ventriloquated'' in order to support or contest the intervention.