Originally published March 20, 2013

I was in the 8th grade, riding back from an oboe lesson, when President Bush crackled on the radio and declared the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I wasn’t sure why we were going to war. I didn’t know the first thing about Iraq and I certainly couldn’t find it on a map.

Over the next few days, I caught daily glimpses of the CNN feed over Baghdad, after lunch and before Algebra. American airpower made for beautiful pyrotechnics; I remember hoping those buildings were deserted. The campaign from the air was followed by a brilliant campaign of maneuver – Saddam Hussein’s army crumpled in five weeks.

Iraqi Freedom wasn’t really over, of course. By late high school – 05-07 – American servicemen were dying at a rate far exceeding those initial few weeks of invasion. In that period, I discovered politics and became a leftie, using Iraq as a catalyst. I wrote my first op ed about the horrors of the war, citing white phosphorus, American imperialism, and Bush the war criminal. It all seemed very straightforward: black and white, right and wrong.

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