BLOOD

Well, no, as it turns out, we probably won't be starting to pull out of the misbegotten war in Afghanistan in July of 2011.
That's a date Barack Obama once set.
That was then. Now, it looks as though it will be more like 2014.
The McClatchy Newspapers reported that this week from Washington.
If you want to, of course, you may still believe the presidential pledge, but I'd rather believe McClatchy. I hate to say this -- Obama's been my main man of politics for some years -- but I don't believe him quite as readily as I once did.
He's not dishonest, but he can be miserably mistaken.
I know these sre really tough times. I certainly know that. And that the war isn't going awfully well for the president and our troops.
Afghanistan is like a bottomless pit. But that's been true since we first sent troops there. Ask the Russians.
The best we can hope for is to begin, actively, to disengage, as we're doing in Iraq. To trim costs and casualties, but still maintain a substantial presence the world expects us to maintain, trying our beat to contain terrorists.
Remember? We went into Afghanistan in 2001, after the 9/11 nightmare, for revenge and to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. We failed.
We then went into Iraq in 2003 to destroy weapons of mass destruction. There weren't any.
And what has it cost?
Well, for the two wars, the dollar price so far is well over one trillion dollars, and it is growing by billions (borrowed billions) every month.
I worry about that. Everybody should. But there's another cost that personally gnaws at me.
It's a cost the local newspaper and television don't even try to keep up with. You can read on the internet, though, that the count of our war dead has passed 4,400 in Iraq and another 1,350 in Afghanistan, including more than 400 so far this year.
That figure may not have much of a personal impact in big cities. But just in the past week, as the New York Times reports, gold stars have been put up -- put up at least figuratively -- in the windows of 14 U.S famiies in towns like Middletown, R.I., Rochester. Ill., and, yes, Arvada. CO.
As a nation, whether we want to recognize it or not, these wars are bleeding us of some of our youngest and very best.
It's steady, slow and painful, and it's just about every day, like a wound that won't heal.
How many Americans even notice? Who notices?