"Bringing the home" would rightly be interpreted as a loss of nerve by the Jihadists. They would redouble their efforts to attack us, having seen with their own eyes how we withdrew after so few casualties.
Naturally, they would find thousands of willing recruits, having "faced down" the might of the United States.
Casualties like this are going to happen in low level insurgency. You have to look at how these deaths are occuring. They are almost always occuring as a result of either mortars, remote control bombs set off by celphone, or RPG attacks on those ridiculously underarmored Humvees.
What you are not acknowledging is the fact that the U.S. has been singularly successful in applying infantry fighting techniques to this situation. You will notice that the jihadists never set infantry on infantry ambushes against us. Some of our more significant victories as of late have occured in that Sunni triangle area. The gomers have learned the hard way that trying to tangle directly with American infantry leads to the death or capture of most of the guerillas.
In any guerilla war, always bet on the trained up infantry unit. Always.
Remember that in June and July we were losing a man or two a day to direct sniping and fire from Ba'athists, ex-Army and Republican Guard, and Fedayeen Saddam? That isn't happening anymore. Deaths do occur, but not with the same frequency. What you are seeing is the reluctance of the g's to close with the Americans.
General Giap understood that for the guerrilla to beat the American, you had to close with the American and hold him by the belt, infantry on infantry.
Arabs are not Vietnamese, and for that we can be thankful.
Be Seeing You,
Chris