It took me a long time to come to terms with my actions in Iraq. I was just a kid, just a cog in a larger machine, sure; but I still made decisions that cost innocent people their livelihoods and indecisions that cost them their lives.

We lost our minds as a country after the towers fell, desperate for someone to blame. The Saudis were too economically important to us, but Iraq was a prime target for unwarranted aggression.

Like a bully on a playground who slugs the first person he sees after getting sucker-punched, Western militaries descended on Iraq and we caused nothing but chaos, and misery, destruction, and death.

I had no idea about the complex division of ethnicities and faiths there. Just a haphazard division of ink on a map that separated people of differing cultures thousands of years old, stuffed them into a box and called it "Iraq." We arrived with tanks, and guns, and bombs, and shitty, sweaty cans as just another group of imperialists to tell these people how to live their lives, in their homes, on their land.

I wish we had been a better people. I wish we were better people. I wish that I had been better. I wish that I was better.