Millennials and Zoomers were blessed to grow up in one of the most placid periods in world history. They did the same stupid stuff that we Boomers did – they thought they understood the world and ignored anyone that said different. We ended up messing up quite a bit of the good stuff our parents had left to us. It comes as no surprise our young ‘uns have done the same.

No pretense that the US is perfect. But no new apologies for every mistake we ever made, either. That’s done. Never forget so we don’t repeat but don’t wallow in guilt, either. When you wallow in guilt you make the world a worse place. When the US does that it becomes paralyzed and appears weak. We can safely have our share of analysis paralysis but we can never, ever appear weak. The world depends on us way too much for that.

The youngsters have become enamored with capitalistic socialism – whatever that turns out to be – and pacifism, among a number of the extreme left’s favorite theories. War is bad – they got that right – and should be avoided at all costs. Er, that last bit has repercussions the planet can’t live with, but you know how it is. Just like our parents before us tried to explain that ‘free love’ wasn’t what we thought it was, they think communism sounds like utopia. Somehow they think they can do what we couldn’t and get to that communist perfection without all that authoritarian oppression.

We spent months in STD clinics. They created cancel culture. Sigh…

We old folks aren’t smarter, obviously, but we’ve got a lot more experience under our belts. We see the danger zones a lot faster than they do. Wish we’d been able to that BEFORE our parents started saying ‘told you so’. Little late now but we can still try and warn the young before they end up in a world where every nation state has nukes.

Eisenhower did warn about the military industrial complex. What the peaceniks forget is that Eisenhower was also a GENERAL. Frankly, the man is underrated for all he accomplished in WWII. Getting allies to not only successfully fight side by side but keeping them from killing each other in the process – both accidentally and deliberately – makes herding kittens look easy but Eisenhower did exactly that. So when he issues a warning, maybe we should pay heed.

Maybe we should not run off into Lalaland and assume that Eisenhower meant that every thing military related must be curtailed or destroyed. I dunno, maybe, just maybe, we should look at each case as well as the overall picture and choose the wisest course we can. Sometimes that will mean reining in the military (Seriously, Pentagon, 246 years and you STILL can’t figure your depreciation?) and sometimes it means building expensive stuff (Gee, ya think maybe having enough shipyards to service all our ships might be a plan?).

No one said grown up was easy.

But, but peace in our time!

Yep, and it was great while it lasted. But it’s over now.

Peace among nation states requires a lot more than just deciding not to go to war. We, the US, funded a lot of that infrastructure and then forgot why were were doing it. We forgot that the world can be dangerous and that we have enemies. We forgot just how bloody the 20th Century was and how horrible political oppression can be. We forgot because we wanted to and we turned blind eyes to the horrors in China and the grumblings in Russia.

No, it’s not all the kid’s fault. We thought it was over with the fall of the Soviet Union. We Boomers did the whole Me Generation thing on steroids thinking we didn’t have to worry about the rest of the world anymore. We could just send money after disasters and be done.

Today’s youngsters weren’t the only naïve ones.

But they were the ones hollering about ‘forever wars’ that were barely wars, at least measured by 20th Century standards. They were the ones that pulled the Democrats insanely left – with help from more than a few old geezers living in academia and thinking they were still hippies and cool. Ultimately, they get the credit for the impetus behind Biden’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.

That one act of folly set in motion all the violence we see today. It’s not directly causative – pulling out of Afghanistan didn’t make Russia invade – but the correlation is direct and strong. Two months later, Russia is massing on Ukraine’s borders. As Russia loses territory, men and equipment, it becomes more defensively belligerent in hopes of making the West stop supporting Ukraine. When threats of nuclear war don’t work, Russia’s loose allies suddenly start coups in North Africa. When that doesn’t prove to be much of a distraction for the US, suddenly Russia’s buddy Iran is backing a massive attack on Israel by Hamas. Gee, quite a coincidence.

Not.

The US has sent in the USS Gerald R Ford, our most advanced aircraft carrier, to support Israel. Evidently, disrupting Biden’s ice cream time makes him REALLY cranky.

In the meantime, because nation states CAN walk and chew gum at the same time, Congress is working on a massive aid package to Ukraine. It’s in the early stages so no idea what all will be in it but I’d bet on ATACMS. Never annoy old men with nuclear footballs, no matter how often they take naps.

Welcome Kiddos, to the world your parents and grandparents grew up in. On the bright side, we did manage to cut down by around 75% the number of nukes aimed at each other. On the not so bright side, Russia and China are both building up their nuclear arsenals.

We did try to tell you the world wasn’t all just nice people who misunderstand each other sometimes. Well, you’ll just have to figure that one out for yourselves, very, very fast.

You no longer need to worry about saving the world from fossil fuels. You now need to save the world from itself. Without US overwatch – you know, that annoying job of being the world’s policeman – it’s too dangerous for most nation states to be without nukes. See, the tech is very old school. Literally, a high school kid can design a nuke. The two things that prevented nuclear proliferation were the high cost – refining uranium ain’t cheap – and the fact that the US could sanction you into the stone age. Only two nation states tried to push that point and no one thinks either Iran or North Korea are doing great economically.

But if the little guys don’t have the US to back them, their only hope is to have nukes of their own. Without the big. bad US playing World Cop, tiny nation states like Israel can quickly get backed into a corner. Ask Armenia how well things worked when Russia stopped protecting them. Armenia isn’t – yet – a member of the Nuclear Club, but Israel very much is. The US is backing Israel as much to support our ally as to dissuade the other regional powers from getting involved.

Why? It keeps the conflict conventional. If Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt all pile on right now, Israel might very well decide that using nukes is its only means of survival. If the rest of the Middle East realizes it could end up in a conflict with a PO’d US, they will very likely decide to sit this one out.

You don’t want to swing the big stick if you can help it, but when you are the world’s only true superpower, you blasted well better carry that big stick!

Remember when we all supported Ukraine because Russia had invaded? Yeah, we still do, but time passes and priorities shift and Tucker Carlson does some dumb interviews (Orban? Really? You do know Hungry is dependent on Russia, right?) and suddenly, we want peace negotiations and are all scared that the Russians will use nukes. This is nothing new. Every conflict goes through this hand wringing stage. Yes, even WWII – we just did it pre-Pearl Harbor, mostly.

Right now, we’re all for Israel. Then we’re going to find out that fighting evil is a nasty business and we’re not going to be so happy about supporting Israel.

The real question isn’t about support for Ukraine or Israel. The real question is how dangerous a world do you kids want to leave to your kids? If we show weakness now, or worse, take our ball and go home, they will know a world where the active use of nuclear weapons isn’t something from an old WWII history book but the horror being live streamed to their phones. This is what we are choosing right now.

Choose wisely.