Because Americans don't like wars with American casualties. I have no doubt that support for the war on terrorists will plummet as soon as mass casualties begin. No doubt that our politicians are well aware of that too.
We will accept casualties if we're winning. If we get bogged down, if we don't achieve our objectives and we have casualties that seem not worth what we're achieving (like in Vietnam), then support will go down. But this is totally different from anything we've faced, except maybe WWII. I couldn't imagine hearing the casualty reports from WWII today. How many thousands of Marines were killed on Okinawa and Iwo Jima? How many were killed early on when it looked like we were losing?
No, unlike Vietnam, Somalia, Desert Storm and Kosovo, we've been attacked here in the U.S. It's different now. We're in it for the long haul this time, I can feel it.
Just like those bastards to attack a church service!
No. This is not Vietnam, as I've said numerous times. This is not somebody else's war, this is one that was started on our shore and we're 4000 bodies down. Those casualties make this an entirely different matter from any military deployment since World War Two, and I don't think anyone expects us to get out of this as easily as we did in the Gulf War. Moreover, I don't expect "mass casualties" because we don't have a "mass" deployment. Well, not mass American casualties, at least.