This morning I woke up and checked twitter like I typically do.
For a vast majority of the American population, we waited and watched for the invasion.
Most of us hoped for it.
Saddam was the ring leader of it all.
His face was nearly -if not more - hated by all Americans than Osama Bin Laden.
When his statue came down, people all across the globe cheered.
The citizens in the streets cheered.
I cheered from the comfort of my college cafeteria.
A few month later, I signed my contract to enter the Marine Corps.
I was a pastor at the time but I lacked real-world experience.
World War II, Korea, Vietnam.
As stupid as that was, it is what I did.
I sought out that experience.
I had no wool over my eyes.
After initial training, I went to Okinawa, Japan.
I obviously knew what I was training for but I had no idea what I was training for.
I used to equate training for war as being the same as practicing football.
If you run drills every day, eventually you want to play in the game.
The whole squad was having a great time just chilling together.
A few hours later, my boss got a call on his cell phone.
He stepped outside with a blank look on his face.
Sergeant Adam Cann was dead.
His death sent shockwaves through the Marines I knew and trained with.
For some reason, these deployments seemed like one great big adventure because I was a moron.
If they were, they were as quiet as the mice at the church I left.
So, we trained, trained, and trained some more.
The images we saw - even from afar - were horrifying.
It was shocking and maybe for the first time, scary.
I experienced all that in 2005 and 2006.
The Iraqi people had been experiencing that for three years at the time.
We still view that as early in the war because it was.
For a long time, I have stuck my head in the sand about what we did there.
I’d say that every troop I knew really thought we were doing some great service to the world.
And it was until it wasn’t.
We often think the same as others in our circles.
We believed that liberation was going to be both immediate and long-lasting.
His body was lifeless.
A land that, at the time, had no articulable mission whatsoever.
By the time the war for me was complete, the number of my own friends killed was high.
But, their losses, we were told, would secure freedom for others.
That freedom would make the sacrifices worth it.
And it was until it wasnt.
At the time, maybe we thought it wasn’t mentioned because we were the liberators.
I think it’s because that liberation was our motivation.
Reading this morning about the suffering and pain inflicted on millions of humans was still shocking to me.
I know the numbers.
I know the actions.
Hell, I’ve hosted one of the most listened-to military podcasts in the world for six-plus years.
I know the numbers.
But, this morning was a stark reminder that those numbers aren’t ticks on a chart.
They are real people.
People who had families, children, friends, enemies, associates, and random interactions with casual passersby.
They were real people.
They were the people who our mission was supposed to help.
Our entire goal was securing their liberty.
Some of those estimates include up to two hundred thousand children.
I wrote the number out because it is staggering.
Two hundred thousand children.
Two hundred thousand children.
Not only were two hundred thousand children killed, millions more were displaced.
Millions more lived in fear every day for the better part of two decades.
We were told that this was a war worth fighting.
My entire life has been changed by the war.
My perspectives on life, religion, and the pursuit of happiness changed in the dusty sands of Fallujah.
Millions didnt get that chance to be introspective.
Millions didn’t get a chance to ever breathe with true liberty.
In many ways, the liberators denied liberty to millions.
From the day that George W Bush announced the invasion, I thought the war effort was justified.
Twenty years later, we can look at the votes in congress that led to the invasion.
Those votes were 268-161.
And it did until it didn’t.
