Warfare and What It Means.

Right now, there are two major wars going on, one being the conflct between Israel and Hamas, the other being the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. Both wars grow out of long-standing political conflicts between the adversaries, and neither conflict appears to be coming to a quick or immediate end.

I was born in 1944, when the entire world it seemed was engulfed in a war. Five years after that war ended, American troops were back on the battlefield in Korea for a conflict which lasted another three years.

Eight years after the Korean War was over, we sent an invading army into Cuba at a location known as the Bay of Pigs, and the following year we began fighting in Viet Nam and entered a military conflict which lasted another twelve years.

We then got engaged in a couple of minor-league military adventures, one in Panama and the other in Grenada, the latter carried on by George H. W. Bush, who also intervened militarily in Somalia, although this conflict was widened by Bill Clinton to the point that American troops on the ground were even killed.

The list of American participation in armed conflicts goes on and on; you can read a very complete description of all these big and little wars rights here.

But the basic point is that I have been alive now for exactly 80 years (my 80th birthday was…