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Two years ago today, the first U.S. soldiers were killed in action in Iraq. Since then, 1,519 U.S. soldiers have died, thousands of Iraqi civilians have been caught in the crossfire, and the effects of the U.S.-led invasion, which began March 20, 2003, have been felt around the world.

Geoff Garrett, vice provost of the UCLA International Studies Institute, said the war in Iraq is one of the “monumental events that have shaken up the world as we know it.”

Before the war began, Bush administration officials – including President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell – stressed the importance of going to war to stop Saddam Hussein from using his alleged caches of weapons of mass destruction.

Such caches have not yet been found.

At the same time, millions of people gathered to protest in New York, Los Angeles, London, Madrid, Berlin and other cities around the world.

Then the war started. American and Iraqi flags waved and statues of Saddam Hussein tumbled in Baghdad when U.S. soldiers took the city in April 2003.

People rejoiced when Saddam Hussein was discovered, dirty and disheveled, hiding in a small earthen compartment in December 2003 near his hometown of Tikrit.

The world was shocked and outraged by videos of insurgents beheading foreign prisoners, and conversely, by the photos of prisoner abuse at the hands of U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison, which were revealed in April 2004.

New optimism surged in January of this year when 8.56 million Iraqi people braved continuing violence to elect a 275-member governing council in their first democratic election in years.

And around the world, families have wept as the war claimed the limbs of their loved ones or left them with scars.

Since combat operations initiated in Iraq on March 20, 2003, a total of 11,344 U.S. service men and women have been wounded in action, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Neither the United States military nor the International Committee of the Red Cross keep tabs on the number of Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of the war. Iraqbodycount.net, an anti-war Web site which catalogues the number of Iraqi civilian casualties reported in the media, gives the number as somewhere between 17,061 and 19,432.

The shock waves created by the war swept through colleges and universities when the war began, but the long-term results have been subtle.

On campus, the responses to the war have varied greatly.

When the war began, the UCLA Academic Senate passed a resolution condemning it and hundreds of students protested, but interest has waned with time.

Daniel Eliav, a fourth-year history student and president of the Peace and Justice Coalition, said many students initially accused Bush of waging a war for economic gain; since the Iraqi election in January, the focus has shifted.

“Now there is a growing consensus that the possibility of democracy will lead to peace,” Eliav said.

Jennifer Otter, a third-year English student and secretary of Bruin Republicans, attributed the decrease in opposition to the war to the recent elections in Iraq and the fact that there has not been a draft.

“At one point a couple of years ago people were skeptical. Now, two years later, people are beginning to see that Bush’s plan is really starting to work and there is more optimism,” Otter said.

But Casey Johnson, a graduate student in Latin American studies and president of Amnesty International UCLA, said students may have lost interest in the war because they no longer feel they can have an influence on policy.

But both students and professors also say the war has galvanized interest in international issues.

Otter said the war in Iraq increased interest in the Middle East and the political situation there.

Garrett cited high attendance at recent events put on by the international institute – such as John Kerry’s talk on foreign policy, which he said drew 2,000 people, and early interest in the new global studies major – as proof that “student interest to try to understand this new world (is) high.”

The war has influenced universities directly as well, but in many cases it is difficult to separate the effects of the war in Iraq from those of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Sally Martin-O’Briant, a spokeswoman for the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, said the high cost of the war is taking money away from federally funded aid programs.

The February issue of the NASULGC newsletter cited a $3 billion cut in discretionary spending for programs other than defense and homeland security in the president’s proposed budget, and noted that some federally funded aid programs for low-income students, like Upward Bound and Talent Search, are slated for elimination.

Jonathan Knight, director of the program on academic freedom and tenure at the American Association of University Professors, said research into defense against biological weapons received greater funding as a result of the war and Sept. 11, but scientists who are not involved with biodefense are facing decreased funding.

And Knight said there have been several occasions when the AAUP was concerned about academic freedom.

He gave the example of an Arizona State University professor who elicited a public outcry and a government inquiry with an anti-war poster with the image of Pat Tillman – the former professional football player turned U.S. Army Ranger who died in Afghanistan. An investigation later found Tillman was killed by friendly fire.

Knight said some members of the public reacted against the perceived message that Tillman’s life was wasted. He said the university’s administration did not take action, but the AAUP saw the inquiry itself as an infringement on academic freedom.

But members of the UCLA Academic Freedom Committee say such concerns have not surfaced at UCLA.

“I have seen no evidence that people are being penalized for their anti-war opinions, or that they feel less comfortable expressing their opinions,” said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor and a member of the Academic Freedom Committee.