sisyphusshrugged | count to 1,000 slowly

from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

We probably won't know which American was the thousandth to die in the war on Iraq or precisely when or where he or she fell, nor do we need to know. The grisly milestone was reached yesterday, according to records compiled by The Associated Press.

In a news conference earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to downplay the looming tick in the death tally. He contended that terrorism's death toll was already well over 1,000 by counting the roughly 3,000 who were lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It was a cynical attempt to renew the discredited connection between terrorism and Iraq. Indeed, Rumsfeld said, our 1,000 dead in Iraq fell to "a combination of terrorists, former regime elements and criminals."

It's no time to engage in the ghoulish calculus of how many American deaths are too many. Even one life lost in an errant cause is one too many. The validity of their sacrifice can never be questioned, but the wisdom of those who called them to make that sacrifice must be.

This is a war whose cost has been borne by so few, waged by a nation that has cut taxes for the wealthy and in which a spike in gas prices is as close as most of us have come to sacrifice. So, for today, it's essential to stop and stand quietly beside this milepost on the road of war -- and count to one thousand, slowly.