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It might seem like cause for celebration after reading the New York Times headline, “Iraq War Marks First Month with No U.S. Military Deaths.” But the smaller print on the page reminds us why celebrating is not really in order: “Many Iraqis are killed…” The cost of this war is still way too high – in Iraqi lives and in our money.

With so much attention and so many billions of our tax dollars shifting from Iraq to the devastating and ever more costly war in Afghanistan, it is too easy to forget that there are still almost 50,000 U.S. troops occupying Iraq. We are still paying almost $50 billion just this year for the war in Iraq. And while we don’t hear about it very often, many Iraqis are still being killed.

There’s an awful lot of discussion underway about the massive cuts in the Pentagon’s budget that may be looming as part of the deficit deal. But somehow few are mentioning that those potential cuts from the defense department’s main budget don’t even touch the actual war funding – this year alone it’s $48 billion for Iraq and $122 billion for the war in Afghanistan.

Just imagine what we could do with those funds – we could provide health care for 43 million children for two years, or hire 2.4 million police officers to help keep our communities safe for a year. Or we could create and fund new green middle-class jobs for 3.4 million workers – maybe including those thousands of soldiers we could bring home from those useless wars.

Barack Obama, back when he was a presidential candidate, promised he would end the war in Iraq. In 2002, he called it a “dumb” war. The U.S. role in the war has gotten smaller but it sure isn’t over. And it hasn’t gotten any smarter. A year ago Obama told us that all combat operations in Iraq were about to end, that “our commitment in Iraq is changing from a military effort” to – what exactly? The 50,000 or so troops still in Iraq are there, we are told, to train Iraqi security forces, provide security for civilians, and, oh yes, to conduct counterterrorism operations. Apparently “counterterrorism operations” don’t count as part of a military effort?