Something you hear conservatives repeat, again and again these days, is that Democratic folk who say that the war is lost or that we should withdraw in X number of months are “emboldening the enemy” and working against our troops, or some variation of that. Aside from the given assumption that these statements are purely political in nature, there is a very strong logical reason to dismiss such claims.

The basic presumption behind the assertion that saying such things is that the Iraqi insurgency is all but lost, is in its “last throes,” if you will, and they are ready to fold up and go home–but because some politicians in the U.S. say the war is unwinnable or that we must withdraw in a year and an half or whatever, the insurgents in Iraq, upon hearing this news, redouble their efforts and decide not to give up. You can’t get around this presumption; without it, the criticism is meaningless. You can’t argue that it means insurgents will escalate and that will hurt our troops; after all, if I were an insurgent and I was confident that the U.S. was on its way out anyway, I’d actually slow things down and wait for the exit so I could use my resources when the U.S. forces were out of the way.

But the other argument, that the insurgents are ready to lose their war, is even more ludicrous. It exemplifies a complete ignorance concerning the nature of insurgencies, especially unsuccessful ones. If there is one rule about them, it is this: they are not short. Go ahead, try to name a major insurgency in the last century that both failed and lasted only five years or so. You can’t, because there wasn’t one, especially not on the scale that we see in Iraq. The Palestinian insurgency has been going on for half a century; the Irish insurgency, maybe 30 years. Columbia, 40 years; South Africa also lasted about 40. The list goes on. The shortest insurgencies last about a decade, but they usually end early because the insurgents are successful, or they peter out before they really get going. The latter clearly does not apply to the Iraqi insurgency.

Also, despite Bush administration claims that the insurgency is ready to go belly-up, there is absolutely no indication in fact that this is so. If anything, the insurgency is escalating, not dying down. One grim piece of evidence to this effect is the slow but steady rise in the number of U.S. troops killed; previously only two per day, now an average of more then three troops are killed in Iraq each day, and Bush’s “surge” is only adding fuel to the fire.

The meaning of this is evident: the Iraqi insurgency, like most insurgencies, is in it for the long haul. They will go one a decade, two decades, or longer. Announcing a withdrawal date or recognizing the clear fact that Bush has clusterf*cked us into a loss will not “embolden” the insurgents in any meaningful way.

On the contrary, if we find ourselves unable to recognize the plain fact that the Iraq War is now unwinnable, if we find ourselves incapable of setting a withdrawal date out of any kind of fear, then we condemn our troops to fight and die for no good purpose. I sincerely believe that no soldier dies in vain because a soldier’s sacrifice is to the country and not to the specific cause; soldiers sign up to serve in whatever way the government deems necessary, not to fight a specific battle and then go home. But soldiers can be made to fight and die in a conflict that has no hope and purpose, and that is the ultimate dishonor against them.