this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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Guilty as charged.
I recall squirming in embarrassed discomfort listening to Bush try to form a coherent sentence.
GLORY DAYS
In 2001, I was one of the few against the Iraq war, and we were pariahs. Flags flying everywhere
i remember living in redhatistan in 2003. it was halloween. i thought of the thing that would be scariest to my neighbors so i dressed up as an iraq war protestor. most of my neighbors immediately got it and thought it was hilarious. about 15% of them were insanely offended and two or three grown men squared up to fight me until they realized the puny disabled kid had this long board with nails in it holding a small sign. i was not unprepared in any way.
I went to a Halloween party in 2004 dressed as an Abu Ghreb detaineee. I was basically naked with flesh-colored compression shorts that had a stuffed dog biting the crotch, a black hood, chains and a leash attached to my wrists, and "property of Abu Ghreb" written on my chest. Absolutely nobody got it (this was also in the South, in a Louisiana town with a big air force base, so it's probably best that it wasn't understood).
it sounds like we would have made the best group costume
I was much more outspoken then, and I learned to keep my weirdo opinions to myself. A mob madness overtakes them
oh gods i've just gotten weirder and louder as i've gotten older.
I got garbage thrown at me in school and I was the one called to the the office over it. I didn't even have a complex opinion on the war. I was just creeped out by jingoism and I wanted to distance myself from it.
I remember in those days I was watching CNN and there was a split screen, one side was a photo of Bush, the other side was a photo of Saddam. I remember thinking "I honestly don't know who scares me more." I had absolutely no idea how bad things could get. I wish we were back to the relative sanity of those days.
Not to be too nitpicky, but the Iraq war started in 2003. 2001 was about California wildfires, the fallout from the dotcom bubble, then 9/11 and Enron.
Apologies, we've been in Iraq since the 90s (?) and it seems continuous to me in retrospect