Italy's announcement that it will withdraw its troops from Iraq as soon as possible should come as no surprise.

Protests against the war have been building in Rome for months and came to a head when U.S. troops at an Iraq checkpoint killed an Italian agent and wounded newspaper correspondent Giuliana Sgrena.

The Coalition of the Willing dwindles further, until almost the entire European continent appears unwilling to take part in this questionable conflict.

Evidence is contained in an e-mail from a friend who is traveling through Europe, written shortly before the withdrawal announcement. More and more people share the sentiment of the desk clerk at his hotel in Rome, who declared, "I am trying to figure out why we are there in the first place."

During a protest near the U.S. embassy, a young Italian told my friend: "No one dislikes Americans -- they just don't understand you."

It is a not-uncommon attitude.

"In London," my friend continues, "a movement is under way to impeach Prime Minister Tony Blair because he lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq war has cost this country dearly in European friends. Recent stops in Paris and London show a real disdain for our war policy and for President Bush, despite his recent efforts in Europe."

The Italian incident, he writes, "is just one more of the many horrible tragedies that have taken place in this war ... some 10,000 Americans wounded or with limbs amputated, more than 100,000 Iraqis killed and the cost to American taxpayers continues to grow beyond $200 billion. The bombing, killing, kidnappings, beheadings, the costs -- there seem to be no end."

Actually, the cost has now exceeded $300 billion, adding to the financial situation here at home that, under ordinary circumstances, would be considered a crisis. In the most recent issue of U.S. News and World Report, editor Mortimer Zuckerman, no liberal by any stretch of the imagination, levels a blunt attack at the Bush administration's fiscal policies.

"The Republicans," he writes, "have squandered the huge budget surplus they inherited by spending not just on guns and butter, but on guns, butter and tax cuts. Because of government obfuscation, most Americans don't realize the deep hole we're in and the fact that we're still busy digging."

Zuckerman and others have quoted grim figures to illustrate the recklessness of administration spending. The government's obligations, current liabilities and unfunded commitments are more than $43 trillion and rising.

"That's trillions, with 12 zeroes -- 43,000,000,000,000," Zuckerman reminds.

It may be the staggering magnitude of such debt that makes Americans less appalled at the price tag of the war to date. As the Government Accountability Office suggests, the estimated net worth of all American families is about $47 trillion, and 90 percent of that would be required to cover current obligations. It would take better than a 10 percent growth rate over the next 75 years to pay off our current debt -- an impossible task considering that the growth rate during the Clinton boom of the 1990s was 3.2 percent.

And the hole we're in, adds Zuckerman, is deeper than we see. The cost of Bush's second-term agenda would add $5 trillion by making his tax cuts permanent. Privatizing Social Security would add $1.5 trillion in the first decade and $3.5 trillion in the second. All of this would come as retirement of the baby boomers approaches, causing Medicare and Social Security costs to soar.

And we must add to that incredible figure the cost of maintaining the military and a war that may last for no one can even guess how long.

Neither does this consider the humanitarian programs that will have to be sacrificed to keep the deficit within its impossible range, including a 14 percent cut in Medicaid, a 12 percent cut in elementary and secondary school programs and a 20 percent cut in clean air and water enforcement. Dropping 118,000 children from Head Start would cut $3.3 billion, and 740,000 low-income and nursing mothers would be left unfunded.

As my friend says in his e-mail, "Maybe no one cares, but surely our hides have not become so thick that we no longer care about life and our image in the world. What a price we are paying for this war."

John Ed Pearce can be reached by e-mail at JohnEd2@aol.com.

© 2005 Lexington Herald-Leader

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