At some point they do it because they are doing it. In other words they learned to regurgitate some basic "War On Terror" lines when asked about they are doing it, but really they do it because there are jobs, resources, servers, infrastructure, support, billable hours, resumes, training, sunk into doing it. And stopping it is just not profitable.
They can never make that as the official reason (although, for example, the private prison lobbyists are not shy about why they advocate for maintaining War on Drugs, it is simply bottom lines for their clients). Here it might one layer lower, on top wrapped in some idealistic War On Terror / Keeping Americans Safe rhetoric. But almost everyone in the chain knows it is about just keep going.
It is emotionally difficult to back out of decisions. Many doomsday cults find their fanatics get even more enthusiastic after the predictions are false.
Good point. Yeah sometimes the fiercest apologists are those that start seeing or having a little doubt, so they double down on the effort in hopes to explain it away, and that is not just for the others but for their own minds as well.
What you describe goes beyond cults to popular religions as well. When you've sacrificed much of your life being good to get into heaven, the cognitive dissonance of new evidence that should shake your belief actually leads you to seek out new equivocations justifying the effort you've sunk into your faith.
I think this is one of the most important problems of our time, and not sure if we are gonna solve it quickly enough. As Scott Adams says in his last book, if capitalism has succeeded for anything, is mostly because of it's simplicity, as there is only one relevant concept to learn about it, profit.
Since you mentioned the latest book by Scott Adams, it's called "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life" [0]. I read it recently and I think it's a good book. It has some nonobvious ideas, like systems thinking vs. goal-oriented thinking.
They can never make that as the official reason (although, for example, the private prison lobbyists are not shy about why they advocate for maintaining War on Drugs, it is simply bottom lines for their clients). Here it might one layer lower, on top wrapped in some idealistic War On Terror / Keeping Americans Safe rhetoric. But almost everyone in the chain knows it is about just keep going.