In a country that grasped what President Lincoln meant when he said that "war at the best, is terrible," it would be discrediting, perhaps even seen as pathological, to compare the risky killing of faraway people to making lemonade. But nowadays Americans are not so averse to wars of choice, partly because a volunteer army, a secure homeland, and a jingoistic press shields us from its realities. We're a nation at war in multiple foreign lands; and for most of us, it's quite easy to forget the men and women serving, or the collateral damage we cause, or even that we're at war.

The costs, however, are real.

As the last troops prepare to come home from Iraq -- hawks like Kristol eying the globe lustily for where they might be redeployed -- it's an opportune moment to attempt an uncomfortable accounting.

Let us confront and grasp the costs of the Iraq War.

NON-IRAQIS KILLED

So far, 4,482 American troops have been killed in Iraq, at least 1,287 of them younger than 22-years-old. That means almost 10,000 grieving mothers and fathers, perhaps as many siblings, many hundreds of widows, orphaned children, and tens of thousands of devastated friends, cousins, colleagues. Still, unless you live in the sort of community that sends a lot of its young into the Armed Forces, those numbers are probably an abstraction, a theoretical tragedy that you cannot connect to names or faces because the devastation is concentrated in a subculture to which you don't belong.

Here is one way to make it a little bit more real. Imagine all the players in the NBA. The familiar ones, like Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Tim Duncan, and Pao Gasol, plus all their teammates, down to the last guy on the bench. Imagine every last one of them killed in Iraq. Then add all the players in the NFL. The quarterbacks and running-backs and wide receivers, but also the offensive linemen, the special teams guys, the punters and field goal kickers, all the way down to the last guy on the bench. All killed in the Iraq War. And then add to that every last player in Major League Baseball, everyone on the expanded roster before the playoffs start, including the sluggers at the top of the batting order and the last relief pitcher who seldom steps on the mound. If all of those guys were killed too, you still wouldn't have equaled the number of American military personnel killed in the Iraq War.

In addition to every player in the NBA, NFL, and MLB, you'd have to add every last member of the 2008 US Summer Olympic Team, even the synchronized swimmers. And if all were killed in Iraq, you'd still need to add every member of Congress, the House and the Senate, at which point you'd be 5 people short of the actual number of American military men and woman killed.

Of course, Americans didn't fight alone.