I’m releasing myself from the burden of trying to justify my viewpoint of the war in Iraq. I find myself debating anti-war people when only a month ago I was one of them. Why such a quick turnaround? It is not because I changed my beliefs in the slightest but realized that my beliefs called for me to switch sides. Uh, I hate using the term “sides” but it is apparent that this is what it has come to.

I never cared about the politics. I never cared about the oil. I never cared about world opinion (mostly). Overall, I never cared about 99% of the bullshit rhetoric that the anti-war people chant.

One thing I still haven’t concluded is exactly what they think were better alternatives. They can keep my busy with the usual arguments, but not one has yet to define exactly what we should have done instead. Oh, except peace. They all say they want peace. But what is very apparent is that they mean for themselves and not for the Iraqi people. While we are over here enjoying our peace, Saddam is over there killing people.

At the same time I’m not going to boycott France and start calling them “Freedom Fries”. Nor do I think that pre-emptive war is how we should handle international affairs just because we are the country that can blow shit up the best. These people just need to get a grip.

Before the war, I was very worried about Iraqi opinion. I’m not talking about Saddam or the regime, but of the average civilian. I was confused by all the politics and ended up not believing in any of it. One thing that I did not see (for obvious reasons) was what the Iraqi people wanted. Would they hate us or love us? Were they happy or terrified under Saddam? Maybe I wanted the coalition to wait for the UN just so I had time to figure out this question.

That all changed over the past couple days. I wish there wasn’t the classification of “pre-emptive” to all of this, but I can’t change that. All I can do is react to the here and now.

Civilian and coalition deaths are tragic. I hate it when I see the photos of the injured or killed. But what can we do? We train, we sacrifice tactics, and we developed smart bombs to defend against these deaths. Many people think that one death is one too many in this war. But how can they say that when, if we weren’t there fighting, there would be many more killed by Saddam?

There are good things coming from all of this. I watch Iraqis standing by the side of the road waving as Marines drive by. I watch as the food trucks pull up and they crawl over themselves to get it. They act like they don’t know if they will see another truck again but I know they will. I get a very uplifting feeling by knowing that. I watch the footage of children running up to soldiers and the soldiers hand them what food they have. I see Kuwaitis volunteering to pack trucks of food just to help the starving people. Right now I’m hearing on CNN that there is an uprising in Basra. I see civilians smashing and ripping down pictures of Saddam.

Forget Bush. Forget the UN. Forget oil. These are the good things I hoped to see. That’s it.