Five years ago today, this Seattlest contributor was sitting in a coffeeshop in Eugene, Oregon, reading the paper about the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. There was something strange and distant about the whole thing, and not just the strangeness and dislocation that every civilian sipping coffee and reading about the scarier facets of the world has: it was also strangely misunderstood, a daring adventure undertaken for reasons no one fully understood.

Five years later, it still feels strange and distant; Iraq is still mired in violence--though we argue about whether it's on the wane or the rise--and yet the degree to which it touches on our daily lives seems to have to do more with politics than with the real world consequences of war. Most Americans are so safely distanced from the fighting that we can't wrap our heads around what it's actually like for those of our countrymen whose loved ones are patrolling the streets of Baghdad in body armor as we sit here, comfortably reading about it on a computer screen, let alone what it must be like to actually be there, as a soldier, or even worse, as an Iraqi.

"War Memorial Under Repair" is a much appreciated contribution to the Seattlest Flickr pool by clappstar.

Some basic statistics: the US involvement in Iraq since the invasion five years ago is 1,827 days; the US involvement in the Second World War, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the surrender of Japan, was 1,347 days. According to the National Priorities Project, a non-partisan organization, the war in Iraq has cost, as of today, in excess of $504 billion. According to a CNN special report website, at least 3,990 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, out of 4,297 total coalition losses. (This site also provides memorial information on all our fallen soldiers.) At least 29,395 soldiers have been wounded. According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 3,991 US deaths have been confirmed by the US Department of Defense, with one pending, as of this posting. Calculating Iraqi casualties has been harder. Several statistical attempts have been made: the Lancet, a British medical journal, published an estimate of 601,027 in June 2006; an August 2007 survey estimated 1,033,000 (see here for more information). Iraqi Body Count, a website which tracks confirmed fatalities, documents between 82,249 and 89,760.

Understanding the war--its causes, its failures, its future--requires a whole bookshelf's worth of reading. There's George Packer's The Assassin's Gate, Thomas Rick's Fiasco, Michael Gordon and Barnard Trainor's Cobra II; there's Bob Woodward's three-part saga of the Bush Administration's inner workings: Bush at War, Plan of Attack, and State of Denial; Mark Danner's Torture and Truth documented the events that led to Abu Ghraib, while Karen Greenburg's The Torture Papers documents the legal analysis that let it happen.

Politically, the cost of Iraq has been high: the Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006 because of the ongoing violence. John McCain's presidential hopes are in question because of his stated support for Bush's policies. Hillary Clinton appears to have been a principled supporter of the war in Iraq at the beginning, while Barack Obama maintains a principled opposition that has, up to now, required little of him.

So where do we find ourselves today, on the fifth anniversary of a war we don't seem to understand and don't much support? Mourning our losses, supporting our troops, and hoping for a better tomorrow? Hopefully, and sparing more than a little sympathy for the Iraqi people in the process. The New York Times has set up a site documenting the history of the war; take a moment, think about where we were and where we are, and ask yourself: one year from now, where should we be? And, perhaps more important: What can we do to help us get there?