Thresholds

A brief note before a New Year's dinner. The 3000th US soldier has died in Iraq. I suppose that means it's 2007 in Iraq, but the landmark fatality will be mourned in the United States as we swallow the dregs of 2006.

I hope that future generations remember last November's elections as a turning point, but this sad milestone in the unswerving course we've taken in Iraq is a reminder that change is not instantaneous, and there will probably never be a single moment we can point to and say "That's the end of that era."

So let's celebrate tonight as if it were the end of that era. And when we wake up tomorrow, let's commit ourselves to changing things, so that we never hit the next threshold at 4,000 U.S. fatalities. A new day is dawning, slow though it be.