Americans today live within the "specious present," a mass-media culture in which the only thing that counts is "what's happening now baby" (Murray the K). There is no sense of history, very little reflection on what came before. We live in a world of "Twitter," a world dominated by "mindless twits."

Thus. we tend to forget the Nineties.  After the United States withdrew from Mogdishu, Somalia (August 22, 1993–October 13, 1993)--and prior to September 11, 2001 it seemed as if the institution of warfare might be fading from the scene. Americans were no longer interested. 

The following citations from Lieutenant Colonel Richard A. Lacquement, Jr.'s paper, "THE CASUALTY-AVERSION MYTH" (2004) provide a sense of the climate of the time.

"It’s easy to see. People go off to war and the bands play and the flags fly. And it’s not quite so easy when the flag is draped over a coffin coming back through Dover, Delaware. SENATOR JOHN GLENN, 1997
 

We had 500 casualties a week when we [the Nixon administration] came into office. America now is not willing to take any casualties. Vietnam produced a whole new attitude. HENRY KISSINGER, 1999
 

It’s obvious that there’s a political agenda to have low casualties. If my Achilles’ heel is the low tolerance of the American people for casualties, then I have to recognize that my success or failure in this mission [in Bosnia] is directly affected by that. MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM L. NASH, 1996
 

[America is] a nation intolerant of casualties. EDWARD LUTTWAK, 1995
 

And the hearts that beat so loudly and enthusiastically to do something, to intervene in areas where there is not an immediate threat to our vital interests, when those hearts that had beaten so loudly see the coffins, then they switch, and they say: “What are we doing there?” SENATOR WILLIAM COHEN (LATER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE)