I recall the day the war in Iraq was gonna start we were driving up to my grandparent’s and I was still naive enough to think there was some chance saddam had nukes cause I was 12. I had also just played the first 2 mgs games and had given deterrence theory some deep 12 year old kid thoughts and concluded that if you truly suspect a hostile country has nukes the last fucking thing you should do is start bombing them. They’ll be way more likely to use those nukes. So to calm my fear of nuclear armagheddon cause I didn’t have a realistic idea of how big an atomic explosion was, how many Iraq could have if they had been pursuing them and they probably weren’t gonna launch an ICBM at nova scotia and if they did we were way the fuck out in the sticks visiting my grandparents and very safely outside the danger zone unless they wanted to nuke a forest or a two lane highway or a lake, I digress. To calm my fears my parents assured me there is no way in hell Saddam has nukes and the Bush admin was just making shit up so they could bomb Iraq. And while that was a relief in terms of my own safety but that was replaced with concern for the people, especially children my age living in Iraq. I had a full fucking freak out over the idea of being bombed. It was a certainty for these kids. Seeing the night vision footage of first bombs raids on CNN at my grandparent’s house is burned into my memory. Ever since a part of me had always been angry. The most powerful country in the world is run by sick butchers. I blamed the bush admin and sorta more broadly the military industrial complex as I started understanding stuff more and more. My need to look into pretty much anything im not satisfied with my understanding of led me more and more left and now here I am