Yet now, as the events of the present day unfold, I find myself wistfully nostalgic for the halcyon days of the Tet Offensive, Viet Cong guerrillas, Da Nang, Hue, the DMZ and Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh. I long for the comfort of the Cold War’s “balance of terror” and reliable (if nasty) enemies like Brezhnev and his merry pranksters in the Soviet Politburo and Mao Tze Tung (before I woke up one morning and discovered that we had all been spelling his name wrong, and that it was really Mao Zedong, and that Peking was really Beijing, by instant international media consensus). Yes, these guys were as evil as they come, but somewhere in their warped sensibilities, they understood that a modus vivendi with the West was necessary, if only to ensure their own survival.

All of that pales with the state of affairs we face now. The international situation is, today, ever so much more grave. During Vietnam, it is true, the Russians and Chinese lurked in the background, as they had during the Korean War, and there was a sense that our efforts were somewhat hamstrung by the notion of triggering a “Hot War” between the two (or among the three) Superpowers, but we were not, on a daily basis, at least after the Cuban Missile Crisis, really in fear of an Armageddon scenario in this Country,

Now, we are. And if we are not, we certainly should be. Aside from the Osamas and Nisrallahs of the World, the international community contains at least two absolute rogue nations (and a pretty good argument could be made that there are others, as well). They are each within a hair’s breadth of achieving full nuclear weapon capability, and are ruled by apparently unbalanced individuals, who, I would submit, cannot be reasonably relied upon to eschew the use of such weaponry on a mere whim.