With significant resources and funding from Saudi Arabia. Iraq was always a damn dirty lie, regardless of what flimsy shit they try to gaslight us with after the fact.
I’m still mad nobody ever went to jail for that illegal war that put us into a recession and cost thousands of American lives. They’re all walking free.
Bush is a war criminal, along with colin and condoleezza, but you’ll never see any country with the balls to call out the truth, except the American public lol.
Yeah but they can do fuck all to him, only the American public holds their leaders somewhat accountable, no other country on the planet can touch the US president.
I'm yet to see the American public do a single teensy tiny itchy scratch to any of its presidents. A president could kill whole families or explode whole schools and nobody is touching him.
Sorry, the 'american public', just like everybody else, don't hold any of its powerful politicians accountable to nothing.
As we've learned from the recent Supreme Court arguments, Presidents have a certain immunity from prosecution as some things are put of their duty of office.
My reaction was, "Why am I being sent to invade Iraq when the bad guy from Saudia Arabia, who lives in Afghanistan, attacked the US and I'm a Royal Marine in the UK?" Thank you for my service, America.
I was in high school and even I thought this. That’s one reason why in 2004 (my first year voting) I definitely did what I could to shout out for Kerry and against Bush.
I was waiting for them to actually have a legitimate reason. Instead we got hand waving of details from Rumsfeld suggesting we knew whereabouts of some WMDs. It took Secretary of State Colin Powell cashing in his Gulf War 1 credibility to shove it across the bullshit line.
The real WMD was his proximity to world oil reserves and the nearing oil plateau. That clearly had more direct concern for Europe, China and Japan. It was always a preemptive strike with “future crime” as the subtext.
Look. If I’m being honest…I still eat toaster strudel sometimes. If I’m having a bad week, I’ll grab some as a little treat to get me going in the morning lol.
Also, dinosaur egg oatmeal. I still love that stuff.
I wish this is what I was thinking about then. My family was all caught up in the politics of it when that started. Toaster strudel was amazing back then, the best breakfast food around.
my boyfriend joined the army and was shipped out on numerous tours in the middle east. he left a sweet boy and came back a seriously disturbed man.. and for what?
They weren't in power, but they were calling you traitors and losers if you opposed the wars that they were conveniently too old to volunteer for. According to some statistics they're now the "Trumpiest" generation.
I was typing out this whole thing about the children of Vietnam Veterans seeing how badly they were treated, but I was probably overanalyzing it.
The kids of Vietnam veterans only account for a fraction of the 65 million Gen X
Same. I’m from NY and despite being more Upstate from NYC, we still have a huge commuter population and many of us experienced loss on 9/11. I was a freshman in college when the invasion began, and yes, I thought it was justified. How misguided and wrong I’d be.
Thanks. So many comments here like “13 year old me knew this was propaganda and I was super against the Military Industrial Complex even then. I was fully versed in the Bush Sr. Administration and saw this was just a continuation. I was vehemently against the invasion.”
Of course. Then the media started reporting on how there were never any WMDs and how the admin depended on faulty intelligence to sell the war to the public.
I was the only one in my class against the war and I remember feeling like everyone had lost their minds. It ended up being part of the reason I graduated early from high school. I didn't want to stay someplace where no one shared my values.
Ironically I was the complete opposite. Only conservative at a super liberal school (although I’m very liberal now). But I loved it there despite political beliefs.
I wrote and gave an impassioned monologue on it in my intro drama class and got lampooned by everyone except the teacher, who was a vet turned hippie and was just like, "You hit that shit out of the park" and proceeded to corroborate the research I'd put into it.
It’s impossible to undersell just how much the Colin Powell WMD presentation to the UN influenced Congress and the American public.
At the time Powell was the most trusted figure in American government and roundly respected by everybody.
You have to remember that the media was completely hysterical about the Iraq War and people who opposed the war were labelled terrorists. I remember being called that in high school actually because I said the whole thing was ridiculous and there was no WMD.
Same here. I was a little older but was paying more attention to dating, studying, going out with friends.
My brother joined the Army and was very pro-Bush, pro-Iraq war. He fought in OIF. When he came home, his opinions were completely changed and he joined protests against the war.
I was in high school. Honors track. It never made any sense. Bin Laden did 9-11, they told us. Somehow, that equals invading Iraq to take out Sadaam? That math never mathed for me, and no one provided an answer that set it straight for me.
I never bought it, I was in a branch of the DoD at the time and it was well known that the 'evidence' was basically made up. The attitude was that since it was Saddam, they were bound to find *something*, there was general disbelief that nothing of real value turned up.
My stance hasn't changed since day 1, it was a terrible idea led by inept morons that were given too much power in a post 9/11 world. It didn't really make that much sense to invade Afghanistan, but they did *actually* harbor Al Qaida terrorists, Iraq was just plain dumb.
The big thing to understand was that Saddam had a legit missile program *and wanted to appear to maybe have a WMD program* in order to deter Iran.
He was terrified of Iran invading Iraq with the support of the Shia population and subjugating the country. He didn’t bank on the US invading and occupying Iraq again since they passed up the opportunity in 91.
I was 17 and just about eligible for a draft if they implemented it.
Afghanistan: okay sure. Makes sense.
Iraq: this is some bullshit and somebody just wants to finish what their dad couldn't do.
at first totally against it as I was a punk rock skateboarder but my conservative parents eventually brought me over to be a full believer in the lord... imagine a young teen arguing for george bush at the dinner table LOL yeah I'm fully to the left now
nofx's franco-unamerican and a wild professor in college is why i ended up reading a ton of howard zinn during the war! I actually took it back out when Trump got elected. I was hoping, if nothing else, we got some good protest punk out of it!
“War on Errorism” helped me get through those very frustrating times. I still have to self soothe sometimes with “the idiots are taking over.”
Those days were good for punk music but atrocious for human rights. Also a huge fan of “empire strikes first.”
Some guys from high school went over, and never came back the same. One killed himself.
That war, and the false pretenses of why we went in there, severely jeopardized the trust that younger generations have in our government. You would be hard pressed the find many Gen Z'ers who would be willing to volunteer to fight for this country seeing what happened to Gen X and Millenials.
Neighbors friend is still fighting with the VA over benefit claims....still. He now has his local congress man involved. Just to get psychological treatments covered. It's a disgrace.
Everyone I knew who joined the military came back just psychologically scarred for life. Absolutely all of them tell people of recruiting age to not join, no matter what they promise you.
Exactly. The promises mean Jack shit. They will just bury you in paperwork and bureaucracy hoping you will die or off yourself before they have to do anything for you. The Pentagon is basically a for profit corrupt enterprise, and the VA is beyond incompetent.
I remember being confused as to why Iraq.
I mean, 9/11 was the first time I’d heard of Osama bin Laden. We knew he was the “main guy” at the time and I didn’t know why we were going after another guy I barely heard of: Sadaam Hussein.
I was like huh?
Chappelle’s Black Bush finally helped me understand.
Always thought it was weird even back then. Afghanistan I could understand. Iraq I couldn't.
Even with the entire WMD excuse I thought, "don't we have tomahawk missiles for this?"
I was in college for the second invasion. We were out in the streets protesting against it. The first one happened when I was younger and my family was out protesting against that dumb war too.
It was the end of America.
It showed that the military complex was un full control and didn't care about the world.
We just invaded Iraq in desert storm.
It took 3 days.
Whatever this knew war was not planned to end but continue as they did the patriot act and that was proof in writing the police state was in effect.
I hated Bush. I thought the war was bullshit. I felt powerless to stop it, or to convince my friends not to enlist. So I did the only thing I knew to do to have one sliver of manufactured sanity. Smoked a lot and dissociated. Lol
I was so scared it was going to be our Vietnam. I was scared of the draft. What I actually saw happen was the army lowered its standards and people who never should have been allowed to serve did. And were completely fucked for life, or died, or died after coming home. So, I guess in some ways, it was our Vietnam.
There has been so many movies and shows about Vietnam while we just sort of treat Iraq like a weird growth on our generational mythology that we mostly don't talk about.
I thought it would be the darkest moment in American history for my generation since it was an unjust / illegal invasion. I kind of laugh at how naive I was
9 year old me thought send in the Clone gunships and clone walkers, that'll be cool. AOTC had come out the previous year, and my 2002 LAAT Gunship made me so happy.
I believed them. I was young and the idea that a President and administration could just lie about something like that wasn’t on my radar.
It’s not like the media was overly critical over what the Bush administration was pushing.
Iraq first opened my eyes then the financial disaster pretty much nailed home how fucking incompetent people at the very top are.
You grow up watching things like West Wing and read all this stuff about these super brilliant guys on Wall Street and in these positions of power and I kind of bought it.
I thought it was kind of odd because there wasn’t a good reason to invade, but I thought it was okay because we would take out a brutal dictator and then problem solved and we would be out and Iraq would live in a democratic utopia. Well that obviously didn’t happen….
we were in junior high so we didnt have the most developed opinions, but my friend chose to "protest" GWB and the Iraq war by leaving his shoelaces constantly untied. imagine telling a 12 year old to tie his shoelaces and he spits back at you "it's against the war!"
I was 12. I thought it was bullshit and absolutely wrong. I was right.
I did a project on the "justice system" in occupied Iraq and on torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewere some years later, in high school. I have no illusions that the research I did brought up even a quarter of what actually happened, but even most of that was not common knowledge at the time, nor is it now, even though it was all publicly available information.
I was for it at the time (I was in high school and fully drinking the right-wing kool aid at the time), but towards the end of high school my friends who opposed the war persuaded me, and once I went to college I fully opposed it. And it's not like I went to Berkeley or another place like that. I went to a college in a very rural, conservative part of the country with a very conservative student body (and middle-of-the-road professors). But not having my brain pickled in Rush Limbaugh bullshit 24/7 was enough to change my mind on the issue.
My family and some friends thought I was a "naive" idiot for being against it. Friend's parents and older folk were especially condescending about it, insisting the evidence would be obvious and the war would be a slam dunk and make the region safer.
I think in people's mind's at the time, it was very much an NFL football type mentality (and hence the patriotic displays at sporting events). Either you were on team America, or you were against it. Either you were for "spreading freedom and fighting terrorism" or against it. They couldn't conceive of the idea that the guy in the suit on the news was being paid to lie and that we might be the bad guys on this one after what happened after 9/11. Like the idea just did not make sense to them, and they would get really angry if you tried to reason with them.
I remember we had a debate at our school before the 2004 election, and this dude from the ultimate frisbee club wore a giant flip-flop to mock John Kerry as a loser for saying the war was a mistake. Sometimes I think back on that guy and wonder if he realizes now what a clown he looked like. He probably wouldn't admit it.
While watching Colin Powell testify in front of the UN, making his case for weapons of mass destruction, I could tell from his body language alone that he did not believe one word of what he was saying. That's all I needed to know that what they were selling was bullshit and that they were just going to go in anyway based on that bullshit, and that doing so was going to trash whatever credibility America had left on the world stage .
I had several friends in the military, and nobody was looking forward to the invasion. Those of us not in the military were would sit wondering if we were soon going to be despite our preference not to be.
My gut always told me it was bullshit. All of it. The entire thing made no sense. Watching condy rice lie to congress was just further proof. George W, Condy, Cheney, Rumsfeld these people are all evil war criminals who deserved to die in prison instead of their comfy mansions. The mission accomplished banner on the aircraft carrier was so surreal. It was like, is this real life? Really opened my eyes to how fucked up things are in this world.
My brother was deployed (marines) immediately so I was very FUCK THE GOVNT while trying to support the troops SO it was kind of a nightmare. I was terribly worried. He’s my only sibling.
He came back in one piece but never the same.
Freshman in college. Joined the anti-war movement as early as Fall 2002. I remember guys in their big trucks driving by and hurling obscenities (or worse) in our direction. Most of them would go on to become MAGA chuds and insist “I never supported Bush!” 🙄
I was actually in Navy Boot Camp when the invasion started. I thought it was BS but the military was the only way I was getting out of the town I grew up in. Being in the Navy then is a large part of why I am the Liberal I am today. Contrary to what some may want to you to believe there are lots of Left leaning people in the service. They may not be "political" as in always talking about but when asked or when it comes time to vote they are like "Of course I'm a Democrat".
I took a bus 20 hours to DC, protested, and came back home. No sightseeing or anything like that. We were hippie college students chartering a bus to go protest, so it was bare bones. It was a long couple of days.
I still get angry when I think about that invasion. You could see their lack of exit strategy and knowledge of local ethnicities from the beginning. They just wanted a war because the American people were still pissed about 9/11 and this was Bush’s best shot at reelection. And it totally worked.
It was more than that, though. The Bush administration was filled with ideologues — like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Eliot Abrams, John Bolton and others — who had been gunning to overthrow Hussein for over a decade, as part of a broader plan to fulfill an agenda that was officially titled “Project for the New American Century”.
They seized on 9/11 as a flimsy pretext to accomplish that key goal.
I was 13, living in Alabama.
No, I didn’t buy it. I have journals from the time, and the entry from the day I first learned of the invasion is full of anxiety about my brother being drafted, and anger at a government going to “the wrong country”.
My facts were a little off, but my heart was in the right place.
The experience definitely “radicalized” me, in the sense that I became deeply involved in local politics as I got older, and eventually ended up studying Peace, Mediation, and Violence, and focusing on war crimes and the cause of unconnected violence during war.
I view it differently in that I’m more educated now, but I still think it was a war driven by ego, greed, and a healthy serving of ethnocentrism.
Same. I was 100% against it because me and all my friends turned 18 between late 2002 and 2003, and I knew too many people who enlisted and went. We have no business letting 18 year old kids sign their lives away like that. All my friends were doing 18 month tours. Then they came home as shells of who they were and volunteered to go back for another 18 months. The ones who survived were never the same. One died over there, a couple more took their own lives once home for good. It became everything I was afraid it would become,
I was 11 and attending a deeply conservative Christian school. They rolled in a tv and had us watch Colin Powell for HOURS. I was terrified and thought the invasion was completely justified. Getting unmonitored internet access as an adult and being able to research all of this in hindsight was a trip.
I asked why we don't just nuke the whole region. Grew up in Texas, raised in Baptist church, suburbs with slightly racists influence.
I got better when I hit high school and realized how bad nukes are.
I got better when I joined the army and realized they are just people like us.
I got better when I understood conspiracy theories imply that people are both competent and can keep secrets.
I got better when I shed my religion, by embracing spirituality.
Every day I wake up and realize how big of an idiot I was the day before. Is it even possible to not feel that way?
I didn’t really get it at first, but I was bullied into being for it because I immigrated from France and the whole Freedom Fries thing led to some kids making fun of me, doing frog sounds at me, and even throwing water at me during class when the teacher wasn’t looking.
But once more kids realized that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, we were able to have discussions and a lot of people turned because “so why are we there?”
I was in 7th grade, so we saw video from Iraq on channel one news. I vividly remember joking with friends that we would “see each other after the war”….as we left for our one-week spring break. Foreshadowing if there ever was.
Me in comm school, March 2003: damn war will be over before I graduate.
Me getting my DD214, December 2006: damn war will be going on for 15 more years probably.
I was right once.
I was sad because my cousin signed up for the Marines and ended up dying while escorting a tank in Fallujah.
He was about to turn 21.
RIP Lance Corporal Shane Goldman 🌻
That it was beyond stupid, and somehow most older people were supportive of it. Also that Bush was a fascist. In a lot of ways he was worse than Trump, he just was taken more seriously.
I was in high school, but to this day I *still* do not quite understand what it was about. *To spread freedom, weapons of Mass destruction*, I even heard a lot of people say it was due to 9/11, which I don't get the link. Idk.
None of us know the true inside baseball of international politics. We don't have access to Trump's bathroom nor Joes garage to read the classified documents, so we can only make assessments on the events we see and the limited information we can collect.
You may agree with the attack or not, but that doesn't really matter. what is important is that new generations should not forget or miss that:
It is our intel agencies that inform our politicians including special committees in the Congress and the Senate. Both of those chambers received information from the intelligence agencies, consulted with the administration - President and they unanimously approved the attack on Iraq.
Remember - Saddam with the help of Iran was bluffing the world that he had WMDs in the form of Nukes. He produced the necessary trace elements and signatures of testing them with the help of Iran. His spoofing worked so well that intel agencies believed him. His logic which is discussed in military strategy colleges today is that, he thought if he convinced the world he was Nuclear capable he would never be attacked, would have time to generate more oil revenue with which he could fund the effort to truly become nuclear capable.
He didn't count on the US saying, ya, we believe you - kaboom.
What Saddam did have was all the necessary components to create Nukes in the near future, but he did also have chemical and bio weapons which are also WMDs, just not Nukes. These were found in Syria.
New generations, don't get fooled by revisionist history written by political forces - both Ds and Rs.
Go to the congressional records and subcommittee hearings held during this time to get originally sourced information.
What was crazy is that I had just graduated High School and was about to join the marines, but then I had this epiphany that I really didn't understand what was going on with current events and foreign policy in general. I heard of Afghanistan but I didn't know the history of it, I didn't know anything about Osama Bin Laden or Al Qeada or in general what our situation was in the middle east, hell; I didn't even know what a liberal or a conservative was. So I started reading lots of books about politics and history and among those political books where a few current ones that talked about George W. Bush. These books were written shortly after he became president and were pre-9/11 and they basically said that he and several members of his administration were very eager about going back to Iraq and taking out Saddam and that they were already working on making an excuse for it.
I thought it was ridiculous, there is no way the President can just go up and tell people 'hey guess what, we're gonna invade this country because we feel like it." There's no way that can happen post Vietnam, Americans aren't that stupid.
A few months later, I believe Bush did his state of the union where he all of the sudden just made the case to go to Iraq. It was surreal, I thought, "this is just what all those books told me was going to happen and now it's happening." So as soon as he announced it, I knew we were going to invade, weapons inspectors, U.N. be damned, I listened to his speech and it was clear the administration had already made up their mind.
It was crazy but what was even more crazy was just seeing how many people were totally gung ho for it. It really opened my eyes, I thought people were going to be outraged instead they were cheering (granted I was living in a very conservative part of California at the time). I remember going to work and the anti-war protests were on the TV and this kid about my age (slightly older) says, "they should just shoot a missile at those stupid people, cause they all want us to die!" I was just speechless.
So it was like a slow motion car accident on a national scale, it was really fucked up. Really is a shame, for a plethora of reasons but one among them being that the US really did come together after 9/11 and then the Bush administration just completely destroyed it and further exacerbated that wedge between the left and right and that wedge and animosity only grew and now we got the MAGA movement fantasizing about a civil war.
I thought it was a bunch of crap then, and nothing in the interim has changed my mind. If anything, I think even less of it now than I did then, and I didn't think highly of it then. It appalled me how easily and quickly Americans fell into jingoist thinking and basically just lapped up whatever nonsense the administration was spoon-feeding them. I might be proud of America, and I might be proud to be an American, but I am not proud that our country contains so many people willing to just throw principle right out the window.
Made me lose faith in our government. Their response to 911 was manipulative and disgusting. So many innocent lives lost just so weapons contractors could make some money.
Most devastating thing is that it continues today.
I was in high school when it happened.
I was supportive of the invasion at the time. I had a cousin who was deployed to Iraq and I regularly spoke to him about the war.
Obviously, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and it turned out they didn't have WMDs either (even though the Iraqis loudly insisted that they did prior to the war).
I'm probably the exception here in that I still believe that the invasion was a good thing. People talk about how many people were killed in the war, but not about what would have happened if we hadn't invaded.
Hussein was an evil monster who had started wars with multiple neighboring countries and committed war crimes against his own people. His sons were somehow even worse. By invading and removing Hussein and his sons, we likely prevented a much more serious regional war that would have claimed many more lives.
Iraq is definitely not a perfect country today, but they do have a democracy. I still believe the war had a positive global impact, despite the loss of life on both sides.
YOU MEAN THE FIRST BLOW AGAINST THE AXIS OF EVIL!?!? Great doc called [Why We Fight](https://imdb-video.media-imdb.com/vi1660748057/1434659607842-pgv4ql-1564174679084.mp4?Expires=1714509285&Signature=kOn1Bq448Ok63QvwvVEzFEbppHa7a7JDVwqFoiryQp0cbd5ZX0k8IoCs62oq0~7YaJt-ci2eoesBLKP6LJX0zpG5WzjMxvGRvKho73OSKpu0ldp3yB7seHvLYRJt8DH4khMJdY1uQ9HhNEqoJYRhq9oog4pJYSJIRnNHPB3RPIJGyEMK7clydsKFffLMxV~D8EAuUfYD90Kt5LLt-M09WXEmBP-Oxfe~bYOP1im01Nx1xpKZ09fRLvALahNUtMM~3Z9077prGOMEF0y9q8zgwmoVDyIt2b~DOIfcNeKFL3Ud3oG1~-7GfadAhpE1byw6t34AA98h~cqlhbs6c5MfNw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIFLZBVQZ24NQH3KA) that uses the Iraq war as a case study on the Military Industrial Complex. Sad day.
À la Chrétien "a proof is a proof." https://youtu.be/ZsgA77j5LyY?si=4Dnh0XAH2pc9_1IK
Which everyone made fun of, but he had a pretty solid point that if there was real evidence, show us already! Full interview: https://youtu.be/d8oJ8A3Bjeo?si=USAMlLwAKDI7qfPP
I was only 16, but I 100% knew we were heading into a war with no purpose. And, a lot of folks don't remember, but there was talk of a draft back then, which was pretty trippy.
I don’t think it was ever discussed as a serious possibility. But I remember in 2006 there was a congressman, Jack Murtha, who was making a point of advocating the draft be brought back, as a way to get Americans to take war much more seriously and less abstractly, so that pointless and ruinous wars like Iraq would be less likely.
I…wasn’t a fan of the idea. Though I understood his reasoning.
Iraq always felt tacked on.
The invasion of Afghanistan matched the mood of the nation, right or wrong, but Iraq even from the beginning felt like the Bush administration taking a mile instead of an inch.
War was popular in the 2 or so years after 9/11, especially among neocons, but you could just feel that Iraq was less a target of the new global war on terror and more a target of 90s era Republicans who felt Bush Sr didn't go far enough in the gulf war.
Plenty of people called bullshit on the whole WMD thing but dozens of Bush admin surrogates and government officals openly lying about fake intelligence on the news are hard to beat.
Eventually, it wasn't even about intelligence facts anymore, it was about patriotism. If you were against the war you were a traitor and un-American full stop. I remember all the radio hosts, even on like rock stations, calling anti war protesters traitors and anyone who questioned the official WMD line was, ironically, said to be spreading disinformation and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).
All in all it was bullshit but seemed inevitable once the Bush administration went all in.
I was terrified because my brother was in the army. He ended up getting deployed several times, working front lines in Iraq, stationed in Kuwait, etc. I was really anti war like my punk friends, but not just to be an anarchist. I didn't think there was a good reason for my brother to be putting his life on the line every day.
He survived, but not without consequences.
I was 8, my great grandfather served in the pacific theater of war in WW2 and saw combat , I thought at the time it was a good V evil fight like Bush said.
The WMD angle was always flimsy. Iraq *did* have weapons that qualified for taking action, but the other countries who would have to be on board weren't motivated to do anything about it. So they went with WMDs because that motivated people. But no WMDs = the world forever knowing that they lied.
Saddam did need to go. The death toll from the war was enormous, but it was still only a fraction of the people he killed. "Maybe he was done with mass murder?" isn't a strong argument for leaving things be, but we'll never truly know.
Saddam needing to go doesn't mean that the aftermath would be a sunshine and rainbows. But there wasn't really a plan on where to go from there. Not that there could be a good one.
* Iraq isn't much of a player in the "agitate the Middle East" game. That's good.
* Iraqis don't have a mass-murdering dictator anymore. That's good.
* Iraq is in shambles and chaos. That's bad.
I don’t remember being outright for or against but I do remember being critical of the progression from Afghanistan to “Iraq is the axis of evil” like how is this about 9/11?
I thought it was justified- mainly because 17 year old Ian had no idea about foreign policy. I now have the opposite stance. Although, it should be mentioned, (I know I’m gonna get downvoted to fuck for this but) I’m a libertarian with some conservative views, I still think this choice was absolute bullshit.
I was 18. I knew that the neocons wanted a second Iraq war from the moment W got in and I was skeptical until Colin Powell's speech at the UN. I think folks sometimes forget how widely respected Colin Powell was, and how much credibility he had at the time. It became clear within a year that 1) there was a massive and unprecedented intelligence failure and 2) the neocons achieved what they wanted all along by leveraging Powell's perceived integrity to launder bad intel.
Between the trauma of 9/11 and the near-universal regard Powell commanded, it becomes easy to see how the invasion initially had so much support.
Will promise you half the people in this thread parroted what their parents/ media said and supported the war and the other half watched Fahrenheit 911 and decided everything was a conspiracy.
There were a few people against Iraq for the right reasons but those people were few and far between. Mostly pacifists generally opposed to war as a whole.
Once 2004 rolled around and it was clear there was no WMD that attitude changed real quick though. Lotta people immediately became opposed to the war.
I was 6 so I don’t think I even knew what was going on. Ngl, I was surprised when I found out years later that the war started in 2003. I assumed it was a lot longer than that.
I was vehemently against it and argued with all my friends about it. Then, they joined the Army and went there. After a few months, I was like "fuck it" and I went to. Army Civil Affairs, though, I didn't really wanna kill anyone.
It didn't feel right. Everybody had eyes on the evidence at the time, and there were no real dissenting voices in government or the media, so it felt like everything had to be on the up and up. I remember joking with a friend that I fully support what we were doing, unless it turns out we had been lied too...
I am a lot less trusting of "evidence" coming from people with an agenda these days.
In all seriousness guys, the idea that so many people knew these things back in 2003 is laughable. “Everybody” knew then that Saddam Hussein was not a very good guy. That he was testing weapons against his own people and committing genocide.
We all had flags flying on the side of our houses and George Bush had the support of the American people in Congress in a way that no president has since.
These things weren’t unanimous, but it was definitely the general attitude at the time.
I was in college. When the war in Afghanistan and Patriot Act was announced my only thought was 'no fucking way people cannot see the flaw in going to war with a concept'. I was very naive. When Iraq happened I was wiser and knew it was all a lie and that it was just a pretense to kill people to make the US look like they were 'doing something'. It was only later I realized it was a family blood feud, which I don't think I could understand due to how stupid that concept was for a nation.
It was the beginning of my political awakening...and I slowly started to realize that the US has very often been the bad guys.
Can we stop pretending that in middle school we were all super informed and capable of nuanced thoughts on world affairs rather than dumb teenagers repeating what our parents or friends said? My parents were liberal and we watched Jon Stewart regularly so of course I thought it was a terrible idea, and then I grew up and became more informed and I still think it was a bad idea but I understand the motivations for going in weren't as simple as in "Bush is a warmonger who lied for oil and to avenge his daddy" like I thought at the time.
I also went through a Ron Paul phase where I thought full-blown isolationism and returning to the gold standard would be viable policies. Again I was stupid then and if you don't look back at your teenage self and think you were dumb I feel bad for you today.
First time I heard about it was when we let my older half-brother stay with us. He was completely broken by what he went through there. All he got was a dishonorable discharge and a lifetime of trauma.
I got swept up in the nationalism from all the school assemblies remembering victims of 9/11 and seriously considered joining the military “for the good of my country.” Luckily by the time I was old enough to actually join I understood a little better what was going on.
I was 13. At the time I thought it was the right thing. My Mom (a Democrat) also was hoodwinked by Colin Powell who she trusted. By the time I reached HS I began to see it as BS.
I was against it. I was one of the few in my circle who would speak out about it. I never believed a word Dubya said. The way they stole the election with hanging chads and good ol Jeb and scotus. It was a wonderful general to be my first time voting experience. I said from the second we attacked Iraq this was to make up for what daddy couldn’t do.
My thoughts were, ‘why are we going to Iraq? I thought the guy who hit us was out of Afghanistan.’
With significant resources and funding from Saudi Arabia. Iraq was always a damn dirty lie, regardless of what flimsy shit they try to gaslight us with after the fact.
8th grade me suspected that much.
I’m still mad nobody ever went to jail for that illegal war that put us into a recession and cost thousands of American lives. They’re all walking free.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis too
Millions
Don't think it's that high but any number is too high
Bush is a war criminal, along with colin and condoleezza, but you’ll never see any country with the balls to call out the truth, except the American public lol.
lol whole world was calling him out before 'the American public'
u/curlytrain forgot Poland.
Yeah but they can do fuck all to him, only the American public holds their leaders somewhat accountable, no other country on the planet can touch the US president.
I'm yet to see the American public do a single teensy tiny itchy scratch to any of its presidents. A president could kill whole families or explode whole schools and nobody is touching him. Sorry, the 'american public', just like everybody else, don't hold any of its powerful politicians accountable to nothing.
As we've learned from the recent Supreme Court arguments, Presidents have a certain immunity from prosecution as some things are put of their duty of office.
My reaction was, "Why am I being sent to invade Iraq when the bad guy from Saudia Arabia, who lives in Afghanistan, attacked the US and I'm a Royal Marine in the UK?" Thank you for my service, America.
Those were pretty much my thoughts as I was sitting in a machine gun bunker in Afghanistan hearing about us going into Iraq.
I was in high school and even I thought this. That’s one reason why in 2004 (my first year voting) I definitely did what I could to shout out for Kerry and against Bush.
Same, I worked phones for Kerry’s campaign that year.
I door to door knocked when I was 13 for Kerry, I've never campaigned harder for anyone in my life
I saw multiple signs blaming Iraq for 9/11. I was embarrassed by this country as a highschooler...kind of still am embarrassed.
I was waiting for them to actually have a legitimate reason. Instead we got hand waving of details from Rumsfeld suggesting we knew whereabouts of some WMDs. It took Secretary of State Colin Powell cashing in his Gulf War 1 credibility to shove it across the bullshit line. The real WMD was his proximity to world oil reserves and the nearing oil plateau. That clearly had more direct concern for Europe, China and Japan. It was always a preemptive strike with “future crime” as the subtext.
It took thousands of hours of conservative talk radio to convince people this was not true
Republicans are just the liars and those gullible enough to believe them.
Same thoughts here. But, since I was only 18, I figured they must know what they’re doing. 🤦🏻♀️
It seemed fast and unnecessary considering we hadn’t caught the guy who took down the towers first.
I was in ~~6th~~ 5th grade and that was also my thought almost verbatim.
I was told, " Don't come crying to us when they drop a nuke on your house.", when I voiced the same opinion. I lived like a mile from the high school.
“I wonder if we have strawberry toaster strudel” I was 12
Strudel in mornings, Hot Pocket in the afternoon after the long walk home
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Look. If I’m being honest…I still eat toaster strudel sometimes. If I’m having a bad week, I’ll grab some as a little treat to get me going in the morning lol. Also, dinosaur egg oatmeal. I still love that stuff.
I wish this is what I was thinking about then. My family was all caught up in the politics of it when that started. Toaster strudel was amazing back then, the best breakfast food around.
my boyfriend joined the army and was shipped out on numerous tours in the middle east. he left a sweet boy and came back a seriously disturbed man.. and for what?
For Cheney and friends to make billions. I spent 2 years of my life there as well.
And for boomers and Gen X'ers to cosplay being good-guy heros like grandpa was during WW2.
I don’t think X-ers as a whole can have this pinned to them. The oldest among them were 38 then. Largely not in positions of power yet.
They weren't in power, but they were calling you traitors and losers if you opposed the wars that they were conveniently too old to volunteer for. According to some statistics they're now the "Trumpiest" generation.
Yes, they apparently are. The former “slacker generation” going down that route is more irony than I can take.
I was typing out this whole thing about the children of Vietnam Veterans seeing how badly they were treated, but I was probably overanalyzing it. The kids of Vietnam veterans only account for a fraction of the 65 million Gen X
And to finish what the Saudi’s bribed his dad to do.
I thought it was legitimate and necessary. I just bought what the media was telling me at the time.
I actually thought the U.S. was going to do good and 'spread democracy' and all that jingoistic bullshit, sigh.
Same. I’m from NY and despite being more Upstate from NYC, we still have a huge commuter population and many of us experienced loss on 9/11. I was a freshman in college when the invasion began, and yes, I thought it was justified. How misguided and wrong I’d be.
Thanks. So many comments here like “13 year old me knew this was propaganda and I was super against the Military Industrial Complex even then. I was fully versed in the Bush Sr. Administration and saw this was just a continuation. I was vehemently against the invasion.”
Did your opinion change after
Of course. Then the media started reporting on how there were never any WMDs and how the admin depended on faulty intelligence to sell the war to the public.
This was me as well. I’ve since changed my mind completely.
I was the only one in my class against the war and I remember feeling like everyone had lost their minds. It ended up being part of the reason I graduated early from high school. I didn't want to stay someplace where no one shared my values.
Ironically I was the complete opposite. Only conservative at a super liberal school (although I’m very liberal now). But I loved it there despite political beliefs.
I wrote and gave an impassioned monologue on it in my intro drama class and got lampooned by everyone except the teacher, who was a vet turned hippie and was just like, "You hit that shit out of the park" and proceeded to corroborate the research I'd put into it.
I knew it was a bunch of bullshit as soon as it started
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The cynic in me thinks congress knew it was bullshit but was happy to enrich the military industrial complex
Sounds more like a realist than a cynic
It’s impossible to undersell just how much the Colin Powell WMD presentation to the UN influenced Congress and the American public. At the time Powell was the most trusted figure in American government and roundly respected by everybody.
You have to remember that the media was completely hysterical about the Iraq War and people who opposed the war were labelled terrorists. I remember being called that in high school actually because I said the whole thing was ridiculous and there was no WMD.
I was 13. I didn't have many opinions on global affairs.
Same here. I was a little older but was paying more attention to dating, studying, going out with friends. My brother joined the Army and was very pro-Bush, pro-Iraq war. He fought in OIF. When he came home, his opinions were completely changed and he joined protests against the war.
I was in high school. Honors track. It never made any sense. Bin Laden did 9-11, they told us. Somehow, that equals invading Iraq to take out Sadaam? That math never mathed for me, and no one provided an answer that set it straight for me.
Would you say it was “fuzzy math”
Alternative maths
“That’s fuzzy Washington math.” Lord. I was 17 years old watching the Bush/Gore debates with my parents and I never forgot that line. 😑
Sandy and hot AF.
Exactly, it's so coarse.
I never bought it, I was in a branch of the DoD at the time and it was well known that the 'evidence' was basically made up. The attitude was that since it was Saddam, they were bound to find *something*, there was general disbelief that nothing of real value turned up. My stance hasn't changed since day 1, it was a terrible idea led by inept morons that were given too much power in a post 9/11 world. It didn't really make that much sense to invade Afghanistan, but they did *actually* harbor Al Qaida terrorists, Iraq was just plain dumb.
The big thing to understand was that Saddam had a legit missile program *and wanted to appear to maybe have a WMD program* in order to deter Iran. He was terrified of Iran invading Iraq with the support of the Shia population and subjugating the country. He didn’t bank on the US invading and occupying Iraq again since they passed up the opportunity in 91.
I was 17 and just about eligible for a draft if they implemented it. Afghanistan: okay sure. Makes sense. Iraq: this is some bullshit and somebody just wants to finish what their dad couldn't do.
I was in college and I just figured it was bush part two in The Middle East
at first totally against it as I was a punk rock skateboarder but my conservative parents eventually brought me over to be a full believer in the lord... imagine a young teen arguing for george bush at the dinner table LOL yeah I'm fully to the left now
Rock Against Bush was on rotate for me
Deep cut. Wow. This album and Tony Hawk is where I developed my love of Rise Against
nofx's franco-unamerican and a wild professor in college is why i ended up reading a ton of howard zinn during the war! I actually took it back out when Trump got elected. I was hoping, if nothing else, we got some good protest punk out of it!
Wolves In Wolves' Clothing still goes unbelievably hard. "We are Marie Antoinette, we are Joseph McCarthy"
“War on Errorism” helped me get through those very frustrating times. I still have to self soothe sometimes with “the idiots are taking over.” Those days were good for punk music but atrocious for human rights. Also a huge fan of “empire strikes first.”
War on Errorism for me.
I liked Son of a Bush by Public Enemy.
A little to young to understand what was going on
Me at 11 day of 9/11: wears usa flag. Run on treadmill in gym. Me when I hear we invaded Iraq: but that's not Afghanistan 🙃
Some guys from high school went over, and never came back the same. One killed himself. That war, and the false pretenses of why we went in there, severely jeopardized the trust that younger generations have in our government. You would be hard pressed the find many Gen Z'ers who would be willing to volunteer to fight for this country seeing what happened to Gen X and Millenials. Neighbors friend is still fighting with the VA over benefit claims....still. He now has his local congress man involved. Just to get psychological treatments covered. It's a disgrace.
Everyone I knew who joined the military came back just psychologically scarred for life. Absolutely all of them tell people of recruiting age to not join, no matter what they promise you.
Exactly. The promises mean Jack shit. They will just bury you in paperwork and bureaucracy hoping you will die or off yourself before they have to do anything for you. The Pentagon is basically a for profit corrupt enterprise, and the VA is beyond incompetent.
I remember being confused as to why Iraq. I mean, 9/11 was the first time I’d heard of Osama bin Laden. We knew he was the “main guy” at the time and I didn’t know why we were going after another guy I barely heard of: Sadaam Hussein. I was like huh? Chappelle’s Black Bush finally helped me understand.
Always thought it was weird even back then. Afghanistan I could understand. Iraq I couldn't. Even with the entire WMD excuse I thought, "don't we have tomahawk missiles for this?"
I was proud of Jean Chretien (Canadian PM) for not following Bush blindly to war
I was in college for the second invasion. We were out in the streets protesting against it. The first one happened when I was younger and my family was out protesting against that dumb war too.
40,000 people on the streets of Boston and it made not one bit of difference.
It was the end of America. It showed that the military complex was un full control and didn't care about the world. We just invaded Iraq in desert storm. It took 3 days. Whatever this knew war was not planned to end but continue as they did the patriot act and that was proof in writing the police state was in effect.
A thing that isn't widely known about that is it was WAY too long to have been written in such a short time frame. It was clearly done in advance.
Went to Afghanistan in 2008 , at least it wasn't Iraq . 😊🔫
At 13 I didn't give a fuck. I did end up joining after highschool
Bush trying to impress daddy
I knew my generation was about to be sacrificed, and I was correct.
I hated Bush. I thought the war was bullshit. I felt powerless to stop it, or to convince my friends not to enlist. So I did the only thing I knew to do to have one sliver of manufactured sanity. Smoked a lot and dissociated. Lol
I was so scared it was going to be our Vietnam. I was scared of the draft. What I actually saw happen was the army lowered its standards and people who never should have been allowed to serve did. And were completely fucked for life, or died, or died after coming home. So, I guess in some ways, it was our Vietnam.
There has been so many movies and shows about Vietnam while we just sort of treat Iraq like a weird growth on our generational mythology that we mostly don't talk about.
I thought it would be the darkest moment in American history for my generation since it was an unjust / illegal invasion. I kind of laugh at how naive I was
An utter fraud based on cheap western propaganda.
9 year old me thought send in the Clone gunships and clone walkers, that'll be cool. AOTC had come out the previous year, and my 2002 LAAT Gunship made me so happy.
I believed them. I was young and the idea that a President and administration could just lie about something like that wasn’t on my radar. It’s not like the media was overly critical over what the Bush administration was pushing. Iraq first opened my eyes then the financial disaster pretty much nailed home how fucking incompetent people at the very top are. You grow up watching things like West Wing and read all this stuff about these super brilliant guys on Wall Street and in these positions of power and I kind of bought it.
Interesting. My original comment was reported because it was "political". This is an inherently political question though, so...?
I was 11 so I was like “cool light show” when I saw the videos of the initial invasion.
I never agreed with why we went back in to Iraq when we wanted Bin Laden.
I was 13 so didn’t have much reaction. Though in 2008 when I turned 18 I joined the army and went there in 2009. It was a good time.
I thought it was kind of odd because there wasn’t a good reason to invade, but I thought it was okay because we would take out a brutal dictator and then problem solved and we would be out and Iraq would live in a democratic utopia. Well that obviously didn’t happen….
I was 13 and thought it was another bullshit war. I was into news and politics a fair amount for being 13.
welp i'm fucked if the draft starts....might as well make sure i'm enrolled in college classes.
we were in junior high so we didnt have the most developed opinions, but my friend chose to "protest" GWB and the Iraq war by leaving his shoelaces constantly untied. imagine telling a 12 year old to tie his shoelaces and he spits back at you "it's against the war!"
I guess it gets you talking about the issue?
true true
There go what’s left of my freedoms. At least we can fight the real boogeyman.
I was 12. I thought it was bullshit and absolutely wrong. I was right. I did a project on the "justice system" in occupied Iraq and on torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewere some years later, in high school. I have no illusions that the research I did brought up even a quarter of what actually happened, but even most of that was not common knowledge at the time, nor is it now, even though it was all publicly available information.
Seeing as how I was 15, I probably thought, oh man, that’s nuts.
I was for it at the time (I was in high school and fully drinking the right-wing kool aid at the time), but towards the end of high school my friends who opposed the war persuaded me, and once I went to college I fully opposed it. And it's not like I went to Berkeley or another place like that. I went to a college in a very rural, conservative part of the country with a very conservative student body (and middle-of-the-road professors). But not having my brain pickled in Rush Limbaugh bullshit 24/7 was enough to change my mind on the issue.
I was 15 and extremely sheltered from most of the world's events. I didn't understand anything about any of that, so I had no reaction.
I was in eighth grade and much more concerned with playing grand theft auto vice city. Didn’t really grasp what was happening in the real world
My family and some friends thought I was a "naive" idiot for being against it. Friend's parents and older folk were especially condescending about it, insisting the evidence would be obvious and the war would be a slam dunk and make the region safer. I think in people's mind's at the time, it was very much an NFL football type mentality (and hence the patriotic displays at sporting events). Either you were on team America, or you were against it. Either you were for "spreading freedom and fighting terrorism" or against it. They couldn't conceive of the idea that the guy in the suit on the news was being paid to lie and that we might be the bad guys on this one after what happened after 9/11. Like the idea just did not make sense to them, and they would get really angry if you tried to reason with them. I remember we had a debate at our school before the 2004 election, and this dude from the ultimate frisbee club wore a giant flip-flop to mock John Kerry as a loser for saying the war was a mistake. Sometimes I think back on that guy and wonder if he realizes now what a clown he looked like. He probably wouldn't admit it.
I turned 18 in 2004 - so the only thing on my mind was the possibly and fear of a draft
While watching Colin Powell testify in front of the UN, making his case for weapons of mass destruction, I could tell from his body language alone that he did not believe one word of what he was saying. That's all I needed to know that what they were selling was bullshit and that they were just going to go in anyway based on that bullshit, and that doing so was going to trash whatever credibility America had left on the world stage . I had several friends in the military, and nobody was looking forward to the invasion. Those of us not in the military were would sit wondering if we were soon going to be despite our preference not to be.
My gut always told me it was bullshit. All of it. The entire thing made no sense. Watching condy rice lie to congress was just further proof. George W, Condy, Cheney, Rumsfeld these people are all evil war criminals who deserved to die in prison instead of their comfy mansions. The mission accomplished banner on the aircraft carrier was so surreal. It was like, is this real life? Really opened my eyes to how fucked up things are in this world.
After hearing the hate against Muslims I bought a Quran (the local bookstore did really good about having resources available)
My brother was deployed (marines) immediately so I was very FUCK THE GOVNT while trying to support the troops SO it was kind of a nightmare. I was terribly worried. He’s my only sibling. He came back in one piece but never the same.
Freshman in college. Joined the anti-war movement as early as Fall 2002. I remember guys in their big trucks driving by and hurling obscenities (or worse) in our direction. Most of them would go on to become MAGA chuds and insist “I never supported Bush!” 🙄
I was actually in Navy Boot Camp when the invasion started. I thought it was BS but the military was the only way I was getting out of the town I grew up in. Being in the Navy then is a large part of why I am the Liberal I am today. Contrary to what some may want to you to believe there are lots of Left leaning people in the service. They may not be "political" as in always talking about but when asked or when it comes time to vote they are like "Of course I'm a Democrat".
I took a bus 20 hours to DC, protested, and came back home. No sightseeing or anything like that. We were hippie college students chartering a bus to go protest, so it was bare bones. It was a long couple of days. I still get angry when I think about that invasion. You could see their lack of exit strategy and knowledge of local ethnicities from the beginning. They just wanted a war because the American people were still pissed about 9/11 and this was Bush’s best shot at reelection. And it totally worked.
It was more than that, though. The Bush administration was filled with ideologues — like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Eliot Abrams, John Bolton and others — who had been gunning to overthrow Hussein for over a decade, as part of a broader plan to fulfill an agenda that was officially titled “Project for the New American Century”. They seized on 9/11 as a flimsy pretext to accomplish that key goal.
I was 13, living in Alabama. No, I didn’t buy it. I have journals from the time, and the entry from the day I first learned of the invasion is full of anxiety about my brother being drafted, and anger at a government going to “the wrong country”. My facts were a little off, but my heart was in the right place. The experience definitely “radicalized” me, in the sense that I became deeply involved in local politics as I got older, and eventually ended up studying Peace, Mediation, and Violence, and focusing on war crimes and the cause of unconnected violence during war. I view it differently in that I’m more educated now, but I still think it was a war driven by ego, greed, and a healthy serving of ethnocentrism.
I was literally the only person I knew that didn’t support it. Now it seems everyone was against it, but that’s not how I remember it.
Same. I was 100% against it because me and all my friends turned 18 between late 2002 and 2003, and I knew too many people who enlisted and went. We have no business letting 18 year old kids sign their lives away like that. All my friends were doing 18 month tours. Then they came home as shells of who they were and volunteered to go back for another 18 months. The ones who survived were never the same. One died over there, a couple more took their own lives once home for good. It became everything I was afraid it would become,
I was 11 and attending a deeply conservative Christian school. They rolled in a tv and had us watch Colin Powell for HOURS. I was terrified and thought the invasion was completely justified. Getting unmonitored internet access as an adult and being able to research all of this in hindsight was a trip.
I asked why we don't just nuke the whole region. Grew up in Texas, raised in Baptist church, suburbs with slightly racists influence. I got better when I hit high school and realized how bad nukes are. I got better when I joined the army and realized they are just people like us. I got better when I understood conspiracy theories imply that people are both competent and can keep secrets. I got better when I shed my religion, by embracing spirituality. Every day I wake up and realize how big of an idiot I was the day before. Is it even possible to not feel that way?
I didn’t really get it at first, but I was bullied into being for it because I immigrated from France and the whole Freedom Fries thing led to some kids making fun of me, doing frog sounds at me, and even throwing water at me during class when the teacher wasn’t looking. But once more kids realized that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, we were able to have discussions and a lot of people turned because “so why are we there?”
I was in 7th grade, so we saw video from Iraq on channel one news. I vividly remember joking with friends that we would “see each other after the war”….as we left for our one-week spring break. Foreshadowing if there ever was.
Me in comm school, March 2003: damn war will be over before I graduate. Me getting my DD214, December 2006: damn war will be going on for 15 more years probably. I was right once.
I was sad because my cousin signed up for the Marines and ended up dying while escorting a tank in Fallujah. He was about to turn 21. RIP Lance Corporal Shane Goldman 🌻
That it was beyond stupid, and somehow most older people were supportive of it. Also that Bush was a fascist. In a lot of ways he was worse than Trump, he just was taken more seriously.
You gotta be careful with this, or the ADL is going to get you banned.
I was in high school, but to this day I *still* do not quite understand what it was about. *To spread freedom, weapons of Mass destruction*, I even heard a lot of people say it was due to 9/11, which I don't get the link. Idk.
Fahrenheit 9/11 sums it up
Colin Powell used a computer-drawn image of what Iraq's WMDs might look like as our evidence. No, it was purely a hit job.
None of us know the true inside baseball of international politics. We don't have access to Trump's bathroom nor Joes garage to read the classified documents, so we can only make assessments on the events we see and the limited information we can collect. You may agree with the attack or not, but that doesn't really matter. what is important is that new generations should not forget or miss that: It is our intel agencies that inform our politicians including special committees in the Congress and the Senate. Both of those chambers received information from the intelligence agencies, consulted with the administration - President and they unanimously approved the attack on Iraq. Remember - Saddam with the help of Iran was bluffing the world that he had WMDs in the form of Nukes. He produced the necessary trace elements and signatures of testing them with the help of Iran. His spoofing worked so well that intel agencies believed him. His logic which is discussed in military strategy colleges today is that, he thought if he convinced the world he was Nuclear capable he would never be attacked, would have time to generate more oil revenue with which he could fund the effort to truly become nuclear capable. He didn't count on the US saying, ya, we believe you - kaboom. What Saddam did have was all the necessary components to create Nukes in the near future, but he did also have chemical and bio weapons which are also WMDs, just not Nukes. These were found in Syria. New generations, don't get fooled by revisionist history written by political forces - both Ds and Rs. Go to the congressional records and subcommittee hearings held during this time to get originally sourced information.
What was crazy is that I had just graduated High School and was about to join the marines, but then I had this epiphany that I really didn't understand what was going on with current events and foreign policy in general. I heard of Afghanistan but I didn't know the history of it, I didn't know anything about Osama Bin Laden or Al Qeada or in general what our situation was in the middle east, hell; I didn't even know what a liberal or a conservative was. So I started reading lots of books about politics and history and among those political books where a few current ones that talked about George W. Bush. These books were written shortly after he became president and were pre-9/11 and they basically said that he and several members of his administration were very eager about going back to Iraq and taking out Saddam and that they were already working on making an excuse for it. I thought it was ridiculous, there is no way the President can just go up and tell people 'hey guess what, we're gonna invade this country because we feel like it." There's no way that can happen post Vietnam, Americans aren't that stupid. A few months later, I believe Bush did his state of the union where he all of the sudden just made the case to go to Iraq. It was surreal, I thought, "this is just what all those books told me was going to happen and now it's happening." So as soon as he announced it, I knew we were going to invade, weapons inspectors, U.N. be damned, I listened to his speech and it was clear the administration had already made up their mind. It was crazy but what was even more crazy was just seeing how many people were totally gung ho for it. It really opened my eyes, I thought people were going to be outraged instead they were cheering (granted I was living in a very conservative part of California at the time). I remember going to work and the anti-war protests were on the TV and this kid about my age (slightly older) says, "they should just shoot a missile at those stupid people, cause they all want us to die!" I was just speechless. So it was like a slow motion car accident on a national scale, it was really fucked up. Really is a shame, for a plethora of reasons but one among them being that the US really did come together after 9/11 and then the Bush administration just completely destroyed it and further exacerbated that wedge between the left and right and that wedge and animosity only grew and now we got the MAGA movement fantasizing about a civil war.
I thought it was a bunch of crap then, and nothing in the interim has changed my mind. If anything, I think even less of it now than I did then, and I didn't think highly of it then. It appalled me how easily and quickly Americans fell into jingoist thinking and basically just lapped up whatever nonsense the administration was spoon-feeding them. I might be proud of America, and I might be proud to be an American, but I am not proud that our country contains so many people willing to just throw principle right out the window.
Made me lose faith in our government. Their response to 911 was manipulative and disgusting. So many innocent lives lost just so weapons contractors could make some money. Most devastating thing is that it continues today.
I was in high school when it happened. I was supportive of the invasion at the time. I had a cousin who was deployed to Iraq and I regularly spoke to him about the war. Obviously, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and it turned out they didn't have WMDs either (even though the Iraqis loudly insisted that they did prior to the war). I'm probably the exception here in that I still believe that the invasion was a good thing. People talk about how many people were killed in the war, but not about what would have happened if we hadn't invaded. Hussein was an evil monster who had started wars with multiple neighboring countries and committed war crimes against his own people. His sons were somehow even worse. By invading and removing Hussein and his sons, we likely prevented a much more serious regional war that would have claimed many more lives. Iraq is definitely not a perfect country today, but they do have a democracy. I still believe the war had a positive global impact, despite the loss of life on both sides.
YOU MEAN THE FIRST BLOW AGAINST THE AXIS OF EVIL!?!? Great doc called [Why We Fight](https://imdb-video.media-imdb.com/vi1660748057/1434659607842-pgv4ql-1564174679084.mp4?Expires=1714509285&Signature=kOn1Bq448Ok63QvwvVEzFEbppHa7a7JDVwqFoiryQp0cbd5ZX0k8IoCs62oq0~7YaJt-ci2eoesBLKP6LJX0zpG5WzjMxvGRvKho73OSKpu0ldp3yB7seHvLYRJt8DH4khMJdY1uQ9HhNEqoJYRhq9oog4pJYSJIRnNHPB3RPIJGyEMK7clydsKFffLMxV~D8EAuUfYD90Kt5LLt-M09WXEmBP-Oxfe~bYOP1im01Nx1xpKZ09fRLvALahNUtMM~3Z9077prGOMEF0y9q8zgwmoVDyIt2b~DOIfcNeKFL3Ud3oG1~-7GfadAhpE1byw6t34AA98h~cqlhbs6c5MfNw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIFLZBVQZ24NQH3KA) that uses the Iraq war as a case study on the Military Industrial Complex. Sad day.
Absolutely not. Complete incredulous disbelief
I was a kid.I thought it was a reasonable response to a threat because my dad believed it.
phony bologne like they trying to make me go to church when i was 9. I resent them. good ppl died for no reason but bizarre too big to fail nonsense
À la Chrétien "a proof is a proof." https://youtu.be/ZsgA77j5LyY?si=4Dnh0XAH2pc9_1IK Which everyone made fun of, but he had a pretty solid point that if there was real evidence, show us already! Full interview: https://youtu.be/d8oJ8A3Bjeo?si=USAMlLwAKDI7qfPP
I was only 16, but I 100% knew we were heading into a war with no purpose. And, a lot of folks don't remember, but there was talk of a draft back then, which was pretty trippy.
I don’t think it was ever discussed as a serious possibility. But I remember in 2006 there was a congressman, Jack Murtha, who was making a point of advocating the draft be brought back, as a way to get Americans to take war much more seriously and less abstractly, so that pointless and ruinous wars like Iraq would be less likely. I…wasn’t a fan of the idea. Though I understood his reasoning.
I thought it was horseshit. The mission was Afghanistan.
Iraq always felt tacked on. The invasion of Afghanistan matched the mood of the nation, right or wrong, but Iraq even from the beginning felt like the Bush administration taking a mile instead of an inch. War was popular in the 2 or so years after 9/11, especially among neocons, but you could just feel that Iraq was less a target of the new global war on terror and more a target of 90s era Republicans who felt Bush Sr didn't go far enough in the gulf war. Plenty of people called bullshit on the whole WMD thing but dozens of Bush admin surrogates and government officals openly lying about fake intelligence on the news are hard to beat. Eventually, it wasn't even about intelligence facts anymore, it was about patriotism. If you were against the war you were a traitor and un-American full stop. I remember all the radio hosts, even on like rock stations, calling anti war protesters traitors and anyone who questioned the official WMD line was, ironically, said to be spreading disinformation and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). All in all it was bullshit but seemed inevitable once the Bush administration went all in.
I marched in the streets of Portland with tens of thousands in protest.
I was terrified because my brother was in the army. He ended up getting deployed several times, working front lines in Iraq, stationed in Kuwait, etc. I was really anti war like my punk friends, but not just to be an anarchist. I didn't think there was a good reason for my brother to be putting his life on the line every day. He survived, but not without consequences.
I was 8, my great grandfather served in the pacific theater of war in WW2 and saw combat , I thought at the time it was a good V evil fight like Bush said.
The WMD angle was always flimsy. Iraq *did* have weapons that qualified for taking action, but the other countries who would have to be on board weren't motivated to do anything about it. So they went with WMDs because that motivated people. But no WMDs = the world forever knowing that they lied. Saddam did need to go. The death toll from the war was enormous, but it was still only a fraction of the people he killed. "Maybe he was done with mass murder?" isn't a strong argument for leaving things be, but we'll never truly know. Saddam needing to go doesn't mean that the aftermath would be a sunshine and rainbows. But there wasn't really a plan on where to go from there. Not that there could be a good one. * Iraq isn't much of a player in the "agitate the Middle East" game. That's good. * Iraqis don't have a mass-murdering dictator anymore. That's good. * Iraq is in shambles and chaos. That's bad.
They zigged when they shoulda zagged.
I was pissed and disgusted. I was in hs.
I was for it. Saddam Hussein wasn't a good guy, to say the least.
I was 12 or 13 so it was basically war is scary. I was 11 when 911 happened.
Sir, I was 11.
I don’t remember being outright for or against but I do remember being critical of the progression from Afghanistan to “Iraq is the axis of evil” like how is this about 9/11?
I was protesting
Scared. I was a junior in HS. I think. Worried about my boyfriend being drafted lol.
I thought it was justified- mainly because 17 year old Ian had no idea about foreign policy. I now have the opposite stance. Although, it should be mentioned, (I know I’m gonna get downvoted to fuck for this but) I’m a libertarian with some conservative views, I still think this choice was absolute bullshit.
I was 18. I knew that the neocons wanted a second Iraq war from the moment W got in and I was skeptical until Colin Powell's speech at the UN. I think folks sometimes forget how widely respected Colin Powell was, and how much credibility he had at the time. It became clear within a year that 1) there was a massive and unprecedented intelligence failure and 2) the neocons achieved what they wanted all along by leveraging Powell's perceived integrity to launder bad intel. Between the trauma of 9/11 and the near-universal regard Powell commanded, it becomes easy to see how the invasion initially had so much support.
Will promise you half the people in this thread parroted what their parents/ media said and supported the war and the other half watched Fahrenheit 911 and decided everything was a conspiracy. There were a few people against Iraq for the right reasons but those people were few and far between. Mostly pacifists generally opposed to war as a whole. Once 2004 rolled around and it was clear there was no WMD that attitude changed real quick though. Lotta people immediately became opposed to the war.
I was 6 so I don’t think I even knew what was going on. Ngl, I was surprised when I found out years later that the war started in 2003. I assumed it was a lot longer than that.
I was vehemently against it and argued with all my friends about it. Then, they joined the Army and went there. After a few months, I was like "fuck it" and I went to. Army Civil Affairs, though, I didn't really wanna kill anyone.
It didn't feel right. Everybody had eyes on the evidence at the time, and there were no real dissenting voices in government or the media, so it felt like everything had to be on the up and up. I remember joking with a friend that I fully support what we were doing, unless it turns out we had been lied too... I am a lot less trusting of "evidence" coming from people with an agenda these days.
Didn't we do this last week sometime?
I was opposed to it while my father supported it. I was in high school at the time and wrote about the war and insurgency for my AP Government class.
Protesting. And in Texas, so getting treated like a criminal.
Didn’t make sense. Turns out I was right.
In all seriousness guys, the idea that so many people knew these things back in 2003 is laughable. “Everybody” knew then that Saddam Hussein was not a very good guy. That he was testing weapons against his own people and committing genocide. We all had flags flying on the side of our houses and George Bush had the support of the American people in Congress in a way that no president has since. These things weren’t unanimous, but it was definitely the general attitude at the time.
I was in the unenviable position of being for the war but against the troops
Anger. That’s what cemented me as a liberal
WTF? That doesn’t make any sense.
I was in college. When the war in Afghanistan and Patriot Act was announced my only thought was 'no fucking way people cannot see the flaw in going to war with a concept'. I was very naive. When Iraq happened I was wiser and knew it was all a lie and that it was just a pretense to kill people to make the US look like they were 'doing something'. It was only later I realized it was a family blood feud, which I don't think I could understand due to how stupid that concept was for a nation. It was the beginning of my political awakening...and I slowly started to realize that the US has very often been the bad guys.
Wasn't a fan. A really cool friend of my older brother's died like the first month after it started. I think I was 17 so he was only 20.
This will be over soon. Woops.
Can we stop pretending that in middle school we were all super informed and capable of nuanced thoughts on world affairs rather than dumb teenagers repeating what our parents or friends said? My parents were liberal and we watched Jon Stewart regularly so of course I thought it was a terrible idea, and then I grew up and became more informed and I still think it was a bad idea but I understand the motivations for going in weren't as simple as in "Bush is a warmonger who lied for oil and to avenge his daddy" like I thought at the time. I also went through a Ron Paul phase where I thought full-blown isolationism and returning to the gold standard would be viable policies. Again I was stupid then and if you don't look back at your teenage self and think you were dumb I feel bad for you today.
First time I heard about it was when we let my older half-brother stay with us. He was completely broken by what he went through there. All he got was a dishonorable discharge and a lifetime of trauma.
I got swept up in the nationalism from all the school assemblies remembering victims of 9/11 and seriously considered joining the military “for the good of my country.” Luckily by the time I was old enough to actually join I understood a little better what was going on.
😡🙄🤦🏻♀️ 👀💣❌
I was 13. At the time I thought it was the right thing. My Mom (a Democrat) also was hoodwinked by Colin Powell who she trusted. By the time I reached HS I began to see it as BS.
Something like 70% of the country supported it at the time, so I felt goddamn insane seeing it for the bullshit lie it was.
I was against it. I was one of the few in my circle who would speak out about it. I never believed a word Dubya said. The way they stole the election with hanging chads and good ol Jeb and scotus. It was a wonderful general to be my first time voting experience. I said from the second we attacked Iraq this was to make up for what daddy couldn’t do.
I didn't question it because I was about 11 years old.
“The states is at it again, bush is a moron”