There’s a phrase that sends me into orbit every time I hear it.

It comes from those who don’t know better, often from those who’ve never answered their nation’s call to place themselves in harm’s way.

The phrase is likely to resurface in the weeks or months ahead if the situation in Iraq goes completely south and the Sunni insurgents take control of the country.

It will come out like this: “All those servicemen and women we lost in Iraq will have died in vain.”

That is the most preposterous, insulting, degrading and unpatriotic thing one can say about a fallen warrior.

Whatever happens in the conflict that has erupted in Iraq, none of those nearly 4,500 brave Americans lost during the Iraq War will have died in vain.

When someone wears their uniform and receives a lawful order to go into battle, he or she is acting on behalf of the rest of us back home. That individual is conducting himself or herself as honorably as is humanly possible.

To suggest that an individual dies “in vain” because of a failed strategy, or set of policies or even a battlefield tactic demeans the service they performed.

The Vietnam War produced a lot of that kind of empty rhetoric. It’s been said many times over many decades now that the 58,000 individuals who gave their all in Vietnam died “in vain.” They did not. They died in service to their country.

I’m quite sure some folks will quibble with what “dying in vain” really means. They’ll seek to parse the language and suggest they mean no disrespect to the fallen when they say such things.

Me? I take it as an insult in the extreme.