Trump bombed s Syrian military installation. It’s been in all the papers.
I’m not going to comment about that, per se – what can I possibly add?
No, I’m not commenting about the pros and cons and rights and wrongs of yesterday’s action in Syria, or of whatever might be around the corner…
… but listening to the “sky is falling” reactions of some of my social media network – especially those below the age of about 45 or so – all I can think is “holy cow, good thing none of you were alive during the Cold War.” They’d all have died of heart attacks or institutionalized themselves from stress in mere weeks.
It seems that something like this, or worse, was happening every month throughout my childhood – which was spent twenty miles from a Minuteman III missile silo.
Just a sample, off the top of my head, from a couple of my high school and college years:
- Soviets invaded Afghanistan; US supplied equipment to the Afghan resistance.
- Polish labor unions started agitating against their Soviet oppressors; Soviets were ready to invade when the Polish Army staged a ‘coup’ and brutally shut down the protests; the US/UK, the Pope and the AFL-CIO smuggled money and other aid to the Polish trade unions to continue resisting the Communists.
- China and Vietnam fought a war
- India (then a Soviet ally) and Pakistan (then a US ally) fought a war.
- India developed a nuke.
- North Korea – a Soviet proxy – was in a constant state of war with South Korea, a US ally. While Kim Jong Il didn’t have the technology his son has, he also launched *many* raids into the South; Nork commando raids, with frequently-bloody resolutions, were a semi-regular thing.
- Soviet sponsored terrorists – Baader-Meinhof, Brigati Rossi and many others – killed people in the streets in Europe.
- Faced with Iraq (a Soviet proxy) building a nuclear reactor that could lead to the Arab Nuke, Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor that was being built by the French.
- Israel (a US proxy) invaded Lebanon to push back terrorists sponsored by Iran, who’d been bombarding the Kibbutzim in the north with Soviet-made rockets; they ran into Syrian (Soviet proxy) forces (in brand-new Soviet tanks and aircraft), and destroyed them in head to head battle, leading to the brink of yet another Mid-east war.
- Cuba (Soviet Proxy) sent troops to aid various sub-saharan dictators (Soviet proxies); US sent aid to the opposition.
- Hezb’allah (a Syrian/Iranian proxy) kidnapped American diplomats, businesspeople and military advisors in Lebanon, killing some of them.
- Soviet planes and submarines constantly probed US and NATO defenses; US and NATO planes and submarines constantly returned the favor, leading to many tense moments)
- Various communist (Sovet proxy) groups launched terror, guerilla and electoral campaigns in South and Central America; the US supported their opposition. Borderline civil war erupted in many countries, supported by both sides.
- Several times during the ’70s and ’80s, errors on both sides led the nuclear forces on *both* sides to go to advanced stages of alert – basically tightening the finger on the hair-trigger. This, at a time when US missile crews were on fifteen minute alert, and at every US bomber base (including Grand Forks and MInot), there were always a couple of B-52s loaded with nukes, their crews in a ready room yards away, warmed up and ready to take off on five minutes’ notice
- The US, responding to the Soviet deployment of “SS20” intermediate range missiles to eastern Europe, sent missiles of our own to Western Europe.
- The Soviets spent millions of dollars of hard-earned foreign currency to support a “peace” movement – against US nukes in Europe.
- During talks over these nukes in Rejkjavik, Iceland, President Reagan called Premiere Gorbachev’s bluff, and walked out. The world’s landed punditry solemnly intoned it was the most dangerous event in human history. (In fact, Reagan called Gorbachev’s bluff, Gorbachev blinked. It was the beginning of the end of the USSR – but nobody knew it then).
- And the entire time, half a million US troops and a ready-for-war NATO (in 1980, the militaries of most NATO countries were 4-6 times larger than they are today) faced something like a million Soviet and “Warsaw Pact” soldiers across a completely militarized border that split Germany into two countries.
Again – not commenting on yesterday’s events themselves. Just the reactions I’m seeing.
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