Staying in Iraq because of past deaths is inconsistent with...

the teachings of business school strategists.

This has to do with the concept of sunk costs: once you've spent a dollar, (or life), an additional dollar (or life) will not get the spent dollar (or life) back. In this case, the decision maker must focus on future costs, not past costs. So the concept of "we don't want to cut and run because that would mean our boys died in vain" is spurious at best, disingenuous certainly, and absolutely no reason to stay.

http://skepdic.com/sunkcost.html

"When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can’t stop now, otherwise what I’ve invested so far will be lost. This is true, of course, but irrelevant to whether one should continue to invest in the project. Everything one has invested is lost regardless. If there is no hope for success in the future from the investment, then the fact that one has already lost a bundle should lead one to the conclusion that the rational thing to do is to withdraw from the project.

To continue to invest in a hopeless project is irrational. Such behavior may be a pathetic attempt to delay having to face the consequences of one's poor judgment. The irrationality is a way to save face, to appear to be knowledgeable, when in fact one is acting like an idiot. For example, it is now known that Lyndon Johnson kept committing thousands and thousands of U.S. soldiers to Vietnam after he had determined that the cause was hopeless and that the U.S. could never defeat the Viet Cong."

addictive personality, though??

We've got Drunky McCokespoon running the war; he's like a sloshed asswipe who abandons his family for the lure of the dice in Atlantic City, tossing chips sloppily on the don't pass line, fumbling for and rolling the dice--come on, mama, Monkey needs a new pair o'boots!!--and hoping like hell he can earn his political capital back!!!

We've got a sucker playing with the chips of our youth and our treasury, leaning drunkenly against the international crap table...it's only a matter of time before casino security escorts him to the door!

But how will we buy groceries, school clothes, and pay the mortgage, when he's spent everything in the bank account?? Will we have to depend on the kindness of strangers? He's sure as hell alienated all of our friends!