It's not hard to understand the basic state of affairs in Iraq. You have the ever-present background conditions of sectarian conflict, contested land claims, and massive quantities of loose munitions. You have current stories, including a significant increase in insurgent attacks even as the Iraqi political structure becomes more and more sophisticated, while remaining largely impotent to address the violence, when not, in some cases, abetting it.

But conservatives cling to shreds of good news and continue playing up celebrity quickie visits. They condemn those who offer dismal prognoses for the war based on the years of evidence justifying such a view. Here's a hypo: If the war continues for five years, will dissenting interpretations of the war become legitimate? Would ten years be enough? When will pessimism about this conflict get recognized as realism and when will optimism come to be regarded as a sign not of courage but of delusion?

Conservatives are not wrong to regard the war on terror, in part, as a battle of wills and of reputation. Some terrorists would doubtless regard withdrawal as weak and be emboldened. Far more significant, however, in the cost-benefit analysis of this war is the number of Muslims from Iraq and elsewhere being radicalized and motivated to fight there, providing them with an invaluable training in the logistics of terrorism, and the resources diverted from other, more substantively terrorism-related fronts in the war on terror. This calculation, of course, leaves to one side the humanitarian costs of the occupation and counterinsurgency, which, shamefully, have never enjoyed much attention in the U.S. media (but which get plenty of attention in the Arab press).

Fighting terrorism by being perceived as tougher than your opponents fosters a pattern of escalating violence that has no logical conclusion. Precisely because the battle against terrorism is an asymmetric war, your enemies cannot be perfectly identified and eliminated; if only a few militants remain at large, they can do terrible damage to society.

Considering this argument requires you to entertain divergent perspectives. Supporting the troops, though, as the term is commonly understood, involves almost automatic approval of what the administration does, and rejects second-guessing. You have to wonder, is hypersensitivity to criticism about national security finally so beneficial to the country's image that it should be indulged regardless of the costs to intelligent decision-making and to the democratic process? Although it is at some level a genuine argument, the hawks' drive for conformity partakes even more of magical thinking. If only we don't speak of persistent failures and policy contradictions in the war, our adversaries will be frightened out of attacking us (even those who seek to die in the process of conducting an attack).

As is true of some meanings of the term political correctness, a trend long assaulted by the right, much of the fear of sending the wrong message to the enemy serves to reduce independent perspective on events. Perhaps worst of all, inveterate hawkishness on Iraq reflects an attitude of hostility to innovation we would not celebrate were it to manifest in other fields. After all, any approach that is already succeeding or that is sure to succeed (both claims we hear about Iraq) need not be replaced. Instead you continue slamming your head against the wall, gritting your teeth at the dizziness and pain, and you continue to tell yourself that soon the wall will crumble.