One of the most-visited spots in Washington, D.C., is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It's also one of the hardest to find. It's of the Mall, of course, but unless you're staring at a map you could walk right by and not know it.

Despite the almost overwhelming power of the simple black walls, many folks have complained that the memorial should be more visible, that by putting the memorial within a landscaped hill on the Mall between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial we are trying to cover up the war.

You know, those folks almost get the symbolism.

But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and plans have been laid for an underground visitors center to be built across Henry Bacon Drive from the Memorial itself. The center will include exhibits, a movie theater and enough other goodies to bring the total tab to somewhere around $100 million.

What I like about the memorial, which turns 25 this weekend, is that it starkly illustrates one cost of the Vietnam War. Even the slightest thought about the Vietnam Memorial evokes an immeasurable sense of human loss.

Recent estimates of the Iraq War peg the monetary cost at more than $1 trillion. That's more than $3,000 per United States resident. The number truly boggles the mind. And yet that figure is a drop in the bucket compared to the human cost of the war.

Millions of people in Iraq have lost their homes and livelihoods. Estimates vary, but most say that hundreds of thousands of civilians have died as a result of the war (this takes into account increased disease, crime, etc., in addition to outright killing). As of this morning, 3860 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, a figure that does not account for non-military "contractors" or other civilians operating in the war zone. That figure is dwarfed by the more than 50,000 who died in Vietnam, but it doesn't begin to explain the true human cost of the current war.

For starters, battlefield medicine has improved exponentially since Desert Storm in 1991. Thousands of soldiers who would have died just 10 years ago survived their wounds. Military medical care is outstanding. The problem for soldiers lies when they enter what I'll call "aftercare." This loose term encompasses physical and mental therapy that, in many cases, might well be necessary for a lifetime.

It's bad enough when you lose an arm, a leg, or more while fighting in a war. It's worse when you are maimed fighting a war that most Americans (and, according to many polls, a large portion of soldiers) believe is a mistake. It's one thing to be injured in the line of duty, a sacrifice honored by almost all Americans (Fred Phelps and his band of bigoted worshippers aside), no matter the particulars of the conflict. But as the years wear on, those physical and psychic wounds can build an increasing sense of betrayal.

While a Boy Scout in the 1980s, I got to know a number of Vietnam veterans. Military types tend to like the Boy Scouts (not that way, of course). A couple of these guys were borderline deranged, and many carried permanent injuries. But even those who weren't physically injured carried wounds. I knew a former bomber pilot who never worried about himself or what he was doing while flying over Vietnam (or Laos or Cambodia). Indeed, his description of himself "in country" is almost a perfect mirror of the bomber pilots in Doonesbury who discussed the Knicks game while indiscriminately dropping tons of bombs on mostly innocent people. He could justify his actions through a sense of duty and was truly relieved to have served in such a way that offered almost no chance of physical harm to himself, but he was angry about the rationale behind his orders. A couple times he expressed a sense of betrayal by the leaders of the country (in his case, Presidents Johnson and Nixon), a sense that made him rather distrustful of authority in general.

Another vet I know was uninjured during the war, but he watched his best friend die in the jungle. His sense of anger and betrayal is so high that it cannot be expressed rationally, and it seems to grow year by year. The last time I saw him, the Iraq War was in its infancy (relatively) and he was so mad he could barely talk about it. The slightest mention of the Prez would set him off. Somehow I doubt that he's feeling better today.

Life damages people. Every day, there's a chance that something will happen that will change your life forever, for better or worse. The truth about war is that it will change the lives of the soldiers in it--by and large, for the worse. Killing people and watching people be killed is not healthy. It might be necessary, but it doesn't make better people. It might be possible to come to terms with the loss of limbs or friends or more, but those losses come at a cost. And that cost must be added to that of those who lost their lives.

War is sometimes unavoidable. The initial war on Afghanistan was necessary and just. The prosecution of that war was (and is) strategically inept, but the war itself was necessary. The Iraq War was not necessary and is in no way just. That fact will add to the already massive human cost of the war, a cost that won't be paid in full until long after the deaths of those who started it.

One of the first rules in any parenting book is "Pick your battles." It is our job as citizens to make sure that our leaders pick the right battles. And if we get into the wrong battles, we need to pick leaders who can find the courage to get us out. Anything less would be a disservice to the men and women who serve in the military. Veterans Day parades are nice, and memorials ably honor the fallen, but if we really want to support the troops we need to make sure that their missions actually protect America. No memorial, no matter how grand or moving, can make up for our failures.

Jon Worley has visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial a number of times, but his most moving experience was viewing a Smithsonian exhibit displaying some of the items left at the wall. The wall is one thing; experiencing it through the notes and totems of those who lost loved ones is inexpressibly wrenching.