You have a good point about people preferring to fight rather than admit to being wrong or appearing cowardly by 'pulling out.'
But even gung-ho types eventually lose their interest in supporting war if there's a lot of setbacks or defeats. Witness Abington's last days. A lot of the internal rebellion and dissent was simple unhappiness with the state of being constantly at war with vastly superior numbers of realms, with no end in sight. Even Gauihu (who was pretty good at propaganda use to convince his countrymen) lost his supporters when he made it clear that not only was peace not in the near future but that he was *increasing* the warlike prison state.
In real life, it wasn't 8 years before people turned against the Iraq war who initially supported it.
