The end of the Iraq War has seen lots of retrospective and lots of posters admitting that the originally supported the war and then changed their minds.So for you, what was it? Feel free to bring up your change in attitude to other wars as well. I remember for instancePanache45 stating that he originally supported Vietnam.
For me, while In was not exactly a supporter of Iraq, what made me against it was firstly the sacking of the Iraqi Army and the associated debaathification process, it was a WTF moment. The second was when the US was chased out of Fallauja in spring of '04, it was then I realised that no one in Iraq had any idea what they were doing.
I thought the Iraq War was necessary when it occurred and I supported it. But that was because I believed the Bush administration when it said it had definite proof that there were currently active WMD development programs going on.
I supported the Iraq War during the run-up - Colin Powell showing photos of “WMD facilities” was the deciding factor for me.
Changed my mind very early on when it became obvious that not only were there no significant WMDs, the people who said there were, were either wrong or lying.
I supported the war in high school, and even considered the military (though my plan was to join the Navy, which I assumed wouldn’t have much of a presence there - but I wanted to contribute somehow.) I had more of a Jewish identity then and I took the attack on 9/11 and the other terrorist happenings very personally, because there was such an anti-Semitic element to them - and I was also very patriotic in high school, and pro-militarism. At least during my Junior year.
What turned me off of the war was when I realized that it seemed like America’s military was being played - both by Bush and by the Iraqis. The conflict turned into what I saw as a bunch of Muslims killing each other over stupid, petty religious reasons and tribal grudges, and American troops stuck in the middle of it, with orders to “help” the people of Iraq who clearly did not want our “help.” Endless news reports of bombings in this or that “holy city” (it seemed like the goddamn country had a thousand “holy” cities) by the Shiites against the Sunnis and vice versa convinced me that this was a giant clusterfuck that the American government did not understand at all and had no business interfering in at the cost of American lives. Then I became extremely bitter about the government and against Bush. By my freshman year of college I was a pot-smoking anti-war hipster and supported John Kerry fervently.
Pretty much what Hyperelastic said. We invaded Iraq and it turned out there were no WMD programs or reasonable evidence of them.
And I don’t see how it was possible to be mistaken on this issue. They were plenty of people around saying there was no evidence before the invasion. The Bush administration said these people were wrong and it had proof. Obviously it did not have any proof of something that wasn’t true. So the Bush administration was lying.