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Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan all were wars of occupation pretty early on. In Vietnam the dumb attempt to maintain basically colonial repression was the whole war to begin with, and to own land you need to occupy... so I don't really see those as examples of what I suggest.
I don't think we have an example of massive declines in public support without a war of occupation being involved. And we have certainly had civilian casualties.
Look at the first Iraq War, not a war of occupation, pretty much a hardware on hardware conflict (to prevent Iraq from performing an occupation). Civilians died in many of the attacks that took place on Iraqi cities, which were aiming for anti-air and communication infrastructure targets. The problem is that military targets are almost always NATURALLY COLOCATED WITH CIVILIANS. That is what a city is, and military equipment (or equipment useful for a war such as radio gear) is scattered over these cities.
I don't recall the massive outcry of public hatred at those casualties in that conflict. It was in the news, it was sad, and there may have been some speeches about the tragedy of unintended casualties in war... and then the news continued on and people cheered as they pretty much completely destroyed the Iraqi armor capacity.
More than anything people hate the feeling of losing, and that comes with the war of occupation. If the news comes up with 'US aircraft and paratroopers destroyed missile launchers with chemical weapons hidden among North Korean hospitals today....' the people would go 'those evil Korean military' and they'd consider it a justified loss.
And don't forget one of the options on the table is nuclear war apparently... which is civilian casulaties of much higher magnitude per unit of military damage.
But I probably won't convince you of this point, so lets just say we disagree on how public support varies based on attacking targets colocated near civilians. I will admit mine is based on mere opinion and observation of historical cases from my interpretation.
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