Plenty of others have by now responded to the general tone of this Jason Zengerle post at The Plank, so let me just zero in on this:

I’m talking about something more nebulous: what are the consequences of America losing a war–which is, after all, what withdrawal will mean? What will it do to our position in the world? What will it do to the national psyche? And what will it do to the people who fought in that war? (Yes, they’ll be out of harm’s way, but they’ll also be left to conclude that all their efforts–and their sacrifices–were in vain.)

Well, first, if the effect on the “national psyche” includes dislodging the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics, I’d say that constitutes what is sometimes referred to as “learning.” The fact that so many Americans thought this was a good idea suggests a dangerously widespread, dangerously inflated view of what American military power can accomplish. The return to earth may be psychically traumatic, but less so, I imagine, than a repeat of this splendid little war. It’s painful and unpleasant to touch a hot stove, too, but I hear those rare individuals born without pain receptors are typically terribly scarred at very young ages.

What really interests me, though, is that last bit. I’ve seen a number of interviews with parents who lost children in Iraq and, contrary to what one might expect, were transformed from war opponents to war supporters by the loss: Their children were gone either way, and they wanted at least the consolation of believing their sons and daughters had died in a noble cause rather than some awful blunder. And one can hardly fault them. But I hope it’s not callous if I say this doesn’t seem like the kind of consideration we ought to weigh in the calculus.

There is a familiar sort of cognitive bias where people who have paid a cost to do something—undergone hazing to participate in a fraternity, say—rate it as being of higher value than those who haven’t. But it is, after all, a bias. The eschatological fantasies of some of the president’s fans notwithstanding, future events in the Middle East will not bring about the resurrection of the dead. More importantly, the costs of staying in Iraq longer, the probability of securing a better outcome by doing so, and the extent of the achievable improvement relative to that cost are all independent of the lives lost in the course of getting us to this point.

If (as I very much doubt) it is worth trying a “surge” for its own sake, then it is worth trying. If it is not, then the sacrifices of those thousands of dead soldiers have already been in vain. The correct response to that fact is not to throw yet more people in harm’s way so we can indulge in yet more wishful thinking. The correct response to that fact is rage.