Bush as chimp courtesy of totallylookslike.com

In March of 2003, just before the United States invasion of Iraq I participated in a protest called, “Books not Bombs” students of the public school system across Madison, Wisconsin walked out of class mid-day chanting with signs, parkas, winter boots and the warmest hippy gear they could find protesting the looming war and the misuse of our tax dollars.

Not even a full day had passed since our social disobedient march to the capital before President Bush’s face haunted all major news networks announcing the first stages or war. I come from a uniquely liberal city as well as a wildly politically active one. I went from feeling the serge of leftist powerful comradery in the cold streets of Madison to being alone in my room plastered to the television watching our monkey of a president spout lies on international news. His televised announcement offered an obnoxiously personal experience; I had to hear his voice and see his face to receive one of the worst messages I’d heard in my life.

The message he was sending hadn’t yet been proven false, though the feelings were already growing. Maybe it was just because I felt so violently against the war or my memory is tainted by the knowledge we’ve all gained since the war started, but I felt I was decoding a false message. Bush announced we were searching for weapons of mass destruction and going to rebuild democracy in Iraq. I heard the words but they held no significance. They were a mask for a duplicitous cause done for the rich and powerful, by the rich and powerful.

I wasn’t sophisticated enough at age 15 to articulate the cues of falsity from the message, I just felt the injustice, at which point I broke my remote and turned off the news vowing to never turn it back on because of how upset it made me. But there was no escaping this message. I went downstairs to the kitchen only to hear Geroge W.’s voice resonating through my house as my mom watched the same news broadcast.

I don’t remember specifics after so many years since the event but when something so astronomical happens in international news I feel whether or not you personally witness a given broadcast it haunts the daily lives of the informed and their friends. I was so disgusted with the war that I turned the announcement off after 15 minutes but I heard detailed accounts of it and the information it relayed from friends, family and in school for weeks to come.

President Bush’s announcement