Imagine, if you will, a small town nestled amid rolling hills and farmland through which a river gently flows. The residents, some 2,300 strong, gather annually on Town Meeting Day to discuss local issues and meet candidates for the Select Board and other offices. On July 4th, they gather for a parade and fireworks. Each year, at the Memorial Park, there is a Christmas tree lighting. The children attend either the Elementary School or the Junior/Senior High School, which last year graduated 28 students. The town has an all-volunteer fire department and ambulance service, a single public library that is open four days a week, and, in the Town Hall, an auditorium with a stage upon which there are annual performances of the Hometown Follies and Christmas Choir.

Such a town, of course, exists. Indeed, there are many such towns. But, more specifically, this one is Richford, Vermont, located a stone’s throw from the Canadian border. A week ago, beneath a gray, rainy sky, some 600 people gathered in the school gymnasium to bid farewell to Joshua Allen Johnson, who was killed on January 25th in Iraq when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the armored humvee in which he was a passenger. Joshua was 24 years old. He was remembered by those who knew and loved him as a young man who was “quiet and a bit shy, but deeply thoughtful� and who “loved his family and always put others before himself.�

As of this writing, there have been 2,267 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq since hostilities began nearly three years ago. Two thousand, two hundred, and sixty-seven. Consider that number for a moment. Now, consider the town of Richford and others like it. Imagine each and every resident in this town—every man, woman, and child—suffering a violent death until there was no one left to walk the streets or mourn the losses. No one. Imagine a ghost town, where nothing stirs but the wind and the river, and the only sound is the creak of a lonely swing on an empty playground. That is the cost of this senseless war. And the cost is rising. Imagine…