More to the point, let's disabuse ourselves of the notion---once and for all---that we somehow "won" the Cold War. Nobody won it. We just lost less than the Soviets did. But we did lose---thousands of our countrymen to HIV/AIDS because we chose to spend money on missile defense instead of on antiviral drug research; thousands of our countrymen to crack cocaine, because our own government allowed it to be smuggled into the country in the name of freedom in central America; and thousands of our countrymen to homelessness because we chose to spend the money developing neutron bombs instead of building shelters and rehab facilities. And we are still losing thousands of our countrymen today---to poverty and foreclosure and permanent unemployment because we are still operating the government on Cold War policy priorities.
Nobody ever truly "wins" a war. It's an epic human failing that measures its losers by degrees. We need to stop behaving so belligerently whenever some other country does something we don't approve of. Put it this way: Wake me up when the Russians start shooting at us. Otherwise, kindly shut up.
---Baron V
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