Easy to say we should hang in when I'm no longer one of those who have to bear the burden, but it's interesting to look back at history and see if today's war and Joe Public's attitude to it after the first heady year or so is any different to previous wars.
American Civil War:
In his excellent 'The Last Full Measure', Jeff Shaara goes into some detail to explain the huge pressures Lincoln was under from a wide section of the press and Northern public to end the war again the South by negotiation. He recognised that a negotiated peace, with Lee's army still intact, would result in two separate USAs (or, to be more exact, a CSA and a USA). He hung in, suffering daily jibes in the press and in the drawing rooms of the Washington elite incredibly similar to what many today say about GWB.
WW2
Many will have seen Clint Eastwood's recent twin films about Iwo Jima. As he made very clear in the first movie, the lionizing of the US Marines who raised the flag on Mt Suribachi had far more to do with rallying a flagging US public to maintain support for a by then very unpopular war than any perceived bravery on the part of the men.
Closer to home, look what the British public did to Churchill and his government the moment the threat of Germany had been removed - kicked him out poste haste, and by a relatively wide margin.
The Vietnam Conflict
Quite possibly the first war in modern history where an army won virtually every major battle against the enemy, but lost the war, in large part because of a thoroughly disillusioned and eventually openly hostile home front.
NI
I got the impression that most people in the UK didn't care a toss either way as long as the IRA didn't bomb London or Manchester shopping centres.
The Iraq War
Still to be decided, but the end game is looking increasingly like the Vietnam conflict, at least in the home front's influence on its outcome.