Thread by @pptsapper

Due to my weird-ass self giving up TV for lent in 2003, I have no memories of watching the invasion of Iraq

I do, however, remember seeing B-52s flying over when I visited England in that timeframe

What a strange era. I was so trusting of government.

I began college in the fall of 2004 at a very conservative school. We were told by professors that it was a just war. A necessary war. One professor, in 2006, scoffed at the insurgency, saying it couldn't even manage to get the 18 US troops KIA per day that Vietnam had

We were so disconnected. One of my friends came back from a deployment with his reserve unit. One Sunday at Mass, the mic popped during the priest's sermon and he dove for cover under a pew. He emerged shamefacedly laughing it off. We all thought it was "cool"

My friends and I would watch the war via gun cam footage from Apaches or AC-130 gunships uploaded to LiveLeak or other sites. We'd argue with anyone who dared say the invasion was unjustified or that maybe we shouldn't be there

My close friend & I enlisted right after graduation

Our drill sergeants were all combat veterans who we both loathed & idealized at the same time. My liberal platoon-mates would argue with me over just war. Within months of graduation of OSUT, nearly half my platoon was deployed somewhere. My bunkmate was killed by an IED in 2010

I remember all of us talking about how we'd rather get deployed to Afghanistan than Iraq, as if it were the "good" war, even as we said we needed to be in Iraq. Many of us got that wish. I don't know that it was any better or worse.

To this day, I struggle with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, because I do not, personally, think it was justified. Or moral. But how could I tell that to my bunkmate's 11 year old daughter who never got to meet her dad?

This, I guess, is moral injury