You are, just this once, a fully accredited member of the White House press corps.

At the podium Tuesday, the president’s press secretary is earnestly performing his daily press briefing. The big news in Iraq is painful: Iraq’s military at Ramadi, largest city of Anbar province and the heartland of the country’s Sunni minority population, has been captured by Islamic State forces. Iraq’s army, trained and armed by the United States, fled after a series of devastating suicide bombings. It is a disastrous development in that country where thousands of U.S. families sacrificed their sons and daughters in what was called America’s war on terror.

You know the ways of White House press secretaries when the going gets tough and political critics get going. Most often, press secretaries begin by dispensing earnest responses to questioners and critics. But sometimes, usually when opponents’ criticisms are stinging, press secretaries will switch to tactics of desperate dismissiveness and begin to josh with reporters and even ridicule critics.

On this day, President Barack Obama’s chief spokesperson tried both tactics. He began with earnest responses, yet ended in dismissive josh mode. It was all in a day’s work for the press secretary with a Dickensian name, Josh Earnest.

Earnest began by quoting a comment the president made last October: “As with any military effort, there will be days of progress and there are going to be periods of setback.” That became his theme and refrain of the day. He cited instances where the Islamic State had made military gains that were ultimately reversed by combined airstrikes and ground forces – in Kobani (just inside Syria), Mosul Dam and Mount Sinjar.

Elsewhere in the West Wing, Obama would be meeting with his Cabinet-level national security brain-trust. Meanwhile, back in the briefing room, your fellow reporters were asking about the scathing criticisms from Capitol Hill that were heard after Ramadi fell. House Speaker John Boehner had declared, “The president’s plan isn’t working.” And a liberal Democrat from California, Rep. Adam Schiff, said the loss of Ramadi should set off “alarm bells.”

It didn’t take long for Obama’s press secretary to demonstrate that, while he certainly understands the importance of being earnest, he also values the importance of occasionally fuzzing things up. It’s an art form that goes with the job. Asked about the criticisms from Boehner, Schiff and others, Earnest responded there had been “areas of progress” and “areas of setback” in Iraq. The president and his advisers were merely exploring whether there are “things that we can do to tweak the strategy.”

Just tweak it. Finally (as the official White House transcript would show), one of your colleagues asked the emperor’s-new-clothes question that got to the reality everyone had been staring at since Ramadi fell:

Q: “You seem to be saying, well, you win some, you lose some, and it goes on. And at this stage of the game, isn’t that a little silly when Iraqi troops have cut and run, and there are a minimum of U.S. troops advising and there’s no real prospect for improvement?”

MR. EARNEST: “Are we going to light our hair on fire every time that there is a setback in the campaign against ISIL? Or are we going to take very seriously our responsibility to evaluate those areas where we succeed and evaluate where steps are necessary for us to change our strategy when we’ve sustained setbacks.”

Q: “I guess my point is this is coming a little late in the game, don’t you think … considering the amount of blood and treasure already expended?”

To which Obama’s press secretary replied: “Well … the amount of blood and treasure that’s already been expended is a microscopic fraction of the blood and treasure that was committed under the previous administration to this effort.”

Oh, no. America’s sacrifice, in terms of blood and treasure, must never be thought about in political terms. Pentagon statistics put the sacrifices of America’s families at 4,425 U.S. military and civilian deaths and 31,951 wounded in action in Operation Iraqi Freedom since the invasion of 2003.

That is part of the measure of America’s sacrifice. What is being determined now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, is how we will answer the same question we asked four decades ago as we were leaving Vietnam:

Have America’s sacrifices been in vain?