More than 2,000.
It's a sizable number, but purely symbolic.
As the number of U.S. military deaths passes 2,000, it's important to remember one death is no less significant and less tragic than the other 1,999.
And, as the death toll continues to rise, Iraqi officials announced Tuesday the constitution has barely passed. There's a large number opposed to the new constitution, which might escalate the insurgency.
Two landmarks. One message: There's no end in sight.
Sixty of those 2,000 deaths were from Michigan. Two — Sgt. Sean Reynolds and Specialist Adrian Butler — were from East Lansing.
Democracy is doing little to sway the insurgency. The number of attacks continue to rise from month to month.
In March of last year, there was an average of less than 200 attacks a week. There were 723 in the first week of this month. There are bound to be more. Deaths are occurring at a faster pace than at the war's beginning: It took 18 months for the first thousand deaths and only 14 for the second thousand.
But 2,000 doesn't provide the whole picture. Many more deaths have occurred outside of the military. An estimate of total civilian casualties by Iraq Body Count, a non-profit organization, placed the number between 26,000 and 30,100. These include native Iraqis, journalists and civilian contractors. An exact number is impossible to find.
How many more need to die? How much longer do our troops need to be there, sacrificing for a victory that seems farther and farther away every day? We don't know. No one knows.
It's a far cry from the administration's claims before last year's presidential election that the insurgency was almost finished. It seems similar to claims by the Lyndon B. Johnson administration regarding the Vietnam War.
"We expect it will get worse before it gets better," former President Johnson said to Time magazine in 1965.
We have lost ground, not gained it, in our fight to stop the insurgency. Only one battalion of Iraqi soldiers is capable of even standing on its own.
It seems we are no closer to leaving Iraq than before. Despite the constitution's passage, the end of the road isn't in sight.
If 2,000 seems ridiculous, it's only going to get worse.
