Our president last week contemptuously rejected any Iraq war policy change that will "lead to defeat" — even as his new Defense secretary admitted we were not winning the war, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger opined that the war is unwinnable and the Iraq Study Group agreed that the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating."

As partial justification for such intransigence, he suggested just last month that to withdraw troops from Iraq would dishonor those who had already served by undermining the cause for which they had fought.

My response to this argument is a single word: Peleliu.

In a place as obscure in American memory as it is remote in the vastness of the Pacific, U.S. Marines fought one of their bloodiest and most heroic battles. And for nothing.

In September 1944, Americans were streaming westward toward Japan, looking toward that good war's end. The tide had long since turned, but the Japanese, still hoping for victory, resorted to suicide tactics and defense of every island between the Americans and their homeland.

Next stop: the Philippines, by way of Mindanao. But before Mindanao could be taken, Peleliu in the nearby Palau Islands, which harbored a large Japanese garrison and considerable air power, had to be neutralized to protect the invasion flanks. The First Marine Division drew this job, which their commander, Maj. Gen. William Rupertus, assured would be a "quickie."

An invasion convoy carrying the Marines steamed toward Peleliu — with D-Day set for Sept. 15 — but fast-changing intelligence led Adm. Chester Nimitz and Gen. Douglas MacArthur to turn their Philippine sights toward Leyte instead of Mindanao.

Since Peleliu was no threat to a Leyte campaign, Adm. William Halsey recommended bypassing the Palaus, letting the Japanese garrison wither as MacArthur had often done so brilliantly in his South Pacific campaign.

Even though the decision to bypass Mindanao made Peleliu landings strategically irrelevant, Admiral Nimitz didn't call them off.

Hardly more than half the size of its far more famous and yet-to-be-invaded cousin, Iwo Jima, Peleliu had likewise been converted into an underground fortress by its 10,000 defenders, all of whom were prepared to die rather than capitulate to the 9,000 invading Marines.

The battle that General Rupertus promised would take three or four days stretched horribly to almost two months, fought heroically in 115-degree heat under what must have been the harshest conditions in the war.

When the fighting was finished, 1,262 Marines were dead and 5,274 wounded. More than 10,000 Japanese perished. Again, all for nothing.

No flag was raised over Peleliu, and news coverage of the carnage was spotty. But as William Manchester, himself a WWII Marine veteran, observed about Peleliu: "To commit brave men to a needless struggle was criminal; to consign them to oblivion was profane."

Just five months after Peleliu, Marines endured similar hardships on Iwo Jima and gained a measure of immortality for their sacrifices. The necessity of Iwo Jima's invasion, coupled with the later knowledge that the nearly 7,000 Marines dead were more than balanced by the 25,000 airmen saved because the island was in American hands, provides as much justification of slaughter as civilization can provide.

But does this suggest that those Marines who fought and died on Guadalcanal or Iwo were any more heroic than their brothers who fought and died in less famous — and less necessary — battles?

And would it have been a failure of will — a dishonoring of those who fought in earlier battles — to recognize that the First Marine Division should not have been wasted at Peleliu, that they should have been diverted or pulled out?

Only to a fool.

It is never too late to acknowledge a mistake, whether strategic or tactical, and it is unforgivable to refuse to rectify an error that will needlessly cost human lives.

A combatant's honor is personal, never diminished by command decision. Rationalizing future losses by reference to the past heroism of others is dishonest, adds insult to injury and is usually a desperate attempt to avoid accountability.

One need look only at the quagmire of the Vietnam decade to see the fallacy of such arguments — or to Peleliu.

James Dannenberg is a retired Hawai'i District Court judge. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.