Once you face the real human costs of your preferred policies in peace or war, you may then

  1. Warmly embrace them;
  2. Accept them with a shrug;
  3. Work to mitigate them;
  4. Decide that they’re too high and look for alternative policies. 

A combination of the sunk costs fallacy and the fear of shame makes the fourth option very rare indeed. Would that it were more common.