As 2014 marches on, it seems like our long national nightmare in the Middle East is finally coming to an end. For young people, it must seem like a paraphrase from "1984": America has always been at war with Terrorism. It isn't the first time that America has been at war with an "ism", however. In the 60s and 70s, America was at war with Communism. That was the boogeyman that was on the verge of destroying The American Way, unless we used our military to strike down communism wherever it showed its face. Thus, we endured a Cuban Missile Crisis, battled in Viet Nam, and conducted a long Cold War against the Soviet Union.
It wasn't until the mid 80s and a change in leadership in the USSR when Perestroika, Glasnost, and the dissolution of the USSR into individual countries brought that Cold War to an end. We began reducing our nuke stockpiles, turning the doomsday clock backwards, and ushering in a technological and consumer renaissance in the U.S. Still - we spied on Russia, and Russia spied on us, and we continued to fight our war via proxies, as Russia and the U.S. inevitably supported opposite sides in various skirmishes around the globe.
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40 comments (Latest Comment: 04/23/2014 22:11:02 by Raine)
