2001 - Like Soldiers Do

Yesterday, the Pentagon announced the death of the 2000th dead American soldier in Iraq. Actually, he'd died on Saturday, 4 days earlier, of wounds suffered a couple of weeks ago.
The Pentagon spin merchants had tried to defuse attention to the 'milestone' figure, by saying the 2000th was no more nor less important than any other death; that it should not be hyped, simply put. And of course the usual media repeated the story - after all, they're too scared to go out of their protected little world in Baghdad - and as that is even coming under attack, I guess we'll soon see media withdrawing from Iraq almost completely. Then we'll only get the Pentagon spin, and we can all shut up and swallow what we're told.
So here, for the record, is the 2001st American death. His name was Jonathan "JR" Spears, from North Florida, and he seems to have been about the All-American boy. High School Football star, US Marine, the regular Yankee invader. He was killed by small arms fire in Ramadi, a single shot, "conducting combat operations". He was on his second tour of duty.
Right now then, I'm not going into how Bush's puppeteers started a war of aggression to control oil assets (oil that New Orleans can really be grateful for, BTW, but I'll come to that another day). I'm not going into how there's going to be thousands of other dead American soldiers in the months and years to come, or of how the people sending them over there to die are exactly the sort of rich arsehole that would never be caught dead sending their own children to war. (No, they'd rather pay for their advancement in politics!)
I'll say two things today.
Firstly, JR Spears was a Lance Corporal when he was killed. Which is the rank my own father had on my birth certificate. I wouldn't be here today if my own dad had been a little unluckier, or he'd been sent to an even more suicidal war, and I guess there's a lot of JR Spears future that will never come to pass.
Secondly, alot of Iraqis, and Afghanis, are wondering who the hell is counting their dead. We don't even know. Is it 30,000 or 100,000 - both recent estimates by the way - or is it even more horrific. Does anybody really care or count any more. At what point does the act of war become an act of genocide? When do the hundreds of thousands of dead - of non-combatant dead - become a war crime? Do the Americans remember the 2 million dead Vietnamese? Will there be a brief comment in the evening news and a touch of Pentagon spin on the day the millionth Iraqi dies? Well, no, because nobody's really keeping count - except these guys, who only count direct military casualties. 2,000 Amrican dead seems to equal a hell of a lot more Iraqi dead. And alot more Iraqis will be dead before the next milestone gets a passing mention in the Western press.
Of course - remember Rosa Parks: just talking about things isn't going to make any difference. If you want to stop the war, you've got to act.
Preferably before the next number we stop to remark upon, is 3,000.