That is to say, the two wars--which are really one--are the first we've fought without resorting (so far) to conscription.

In Vietnam, Korea, World Wars I and II and the Civil War, the country ultimately had to resort to drafting young men in order to get to the end of the conflict.

That's not true today. Today the war and its casualties rest on the shoulders of regular Army troops, both men and women, and on reservists and National Guard, again both men and women, and on their families.

As wars go, the death toll among troops thus far in Iraq has not been large. That, however, makes no difference to the families of those who have lost sons, brothers, husbands, daughters, sisters and even wives. The loss is no less to them.

Yet there is a difference and it is a difference that is beginning to become more and more evident.

The unequal burden being borne by the Army and its associated reserve units can't help but make a difference in the way in which individual citizens look upon the war. If your son or daughter, husband or wife, sister or brother is somewhere among the troops in Iraq, the war means a lot more to you than it does to the rest of the population. You have to face the possibility of losing a loved one.

We who have no relatives or friends there can sympathize, but we can't really appreciate the pain you're suffering every day that the war continues.

And that's not all.

What is beginning to be even more telling is the fact that troops are being asked to return to the war after one, two or perhaps more tours of duty. This makes even more difficult the life of the soldier involved. It is one thing to be in war and to survive it. It is yet another and more terrible strain on the human psyche to return to a war you had seen before, knowing what you know about it and dreading the repeat of what you have experienced on a previous trip.

That, at least, is one thing I do know from personal experience. In World War II, I was wounded, went to the hospital for a couple of weeks and then returned to the front. It's not true that it's better the second time around. It's worse--a lot worse.

True, service in Iraq no longer is direct combat. That phase of the war passed with the fall of Saddam and the collapse of the Iraqi army. But the "insurgency," as it is called for lack of a better term, is almost as terrible and uncertain as were the days of intense and direct fighting between opposing sides. So far American and "coalition" troops have the challenge of the insurgency.

But Iraq is a big place with a large population and troops are thin and likely to get thinner in number before the struggle is resolved and they come home.

Nor have we yet counted up the cost to be paid by those who will ultimately one day come home, a cost which is still evident on any visit to a Veterans Affairs health facility: the latent debris of lives left by service in combat.

The long-term effect of physical wounds has been a part of every war in which the nation has fought. But since Vietnam we have had to deal with another kind of injury. These wounds often are not physical, but rather psychiatric. They include posttraumatic stress syndrome cases, alcoholism, drug abuse (both prescription and illicit) and other mental disorders. Treating them requires time, patience and care and treating them also often means treating the families of those who served. The longer the war in Iraq lasts, the larger the number of these cases are likely to become.

All this has created a peculiar kind of national ambivalence about the war.

On the one hand, a majority of Americans apparently now believe the war was a bad idea and ought somehow to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. On the other, they don't want to fall into the trap into which we descended in Vietnam: we blamed those who fought in the war itself, as if somehow their participation made them liable for its happening.

We want our troops in Iraq to know we appreciate, even admire the job they have done and are doing. We don't want them to feel, as did some soldiers in Vietnam, that they had been betrayed by those at home.

It is a dilemma almost as difficult as finding a way to end the conflict.

And so we press on, neither problem resolved, no end in sight in a conflict that grows increasingly unpopular and just as unequally borne.