Elf Sternberg

I think the answer is obvious:

When Ronald "Facts are stupid things" Reagan was in office, the last death blows to the economic well-being of the Soviet Union were enacted. It took a few years for something that big to finally keel over, but it did a year while his successor, George H. W. Bush, was in office. After that we had ten years of relatively little challenge: a very successful combat operation in Kuwait and the Clinton technology bubble basically led to an attitude on the part of the American people that hard work wasn't really necessary, that The System could take care of itself without input, and that we never needed to look outside our own borders for potential challengers. We'd taught the Commies and the Ayrabs a lesson, and that was that.

After 9/11, we were told that The Government Would Take Care of Everything, and all we had to do was "go shopping." That's it. We stopped being citizens and became consumers, propping up an economic system that is spiraling out of control. Half our country spends its days being scared of bogeyman, and when it's not being scared, it's being angry because the other half isn't scared enough.

Michael Leeden of the American Enterprise Institute (a Koch-brothers funded noise tank) once wrote, "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." We did that in Iraq. After 9/11, we did it to Afghanistan and again to Iraq. We've become bullies, kicking around the smaller nations to mask our own fear. Bullies don't need to study: we steal other kids' lunch money and class notes, and turn them in as they were are own.

But the first Iraq war was 19 years ago. The world has moved on. And now the bully at 19 looks at the world and realizes he doesn't have the skills needed to prosper.