Take a Moment to Savor the Victory

Let's start this week on an upbeat note. There is actually a lot to be proud of. There are actually some things on the national security front that make 2016 a safer and more predictable year than most in our recent history.

Through all my formative years, college, and my early JO years, the world was always 30 minutes away from global nuclear war. The soul crushing political cult of Communism was seen as inevitable and the fact it could implode with little blood and turmoil like it did in the early 90s was not even thought a possibility in "polite" society.

No one predicted what would happen would happen. From the fellow travelers and useful idiots on the Left like those who wrote for The Nation who were positioning and signaling so they would have a power role when the USA fell, to old Cold Warriors like George Bush the Elder who - even to the end with the "Chicken Kiev" speech - couldn't see what was going on; no one saw it.

What a glorious victory for The West and the fruits of The Enlightenment. Not a full victory, and we have different challenges now - as humans always will - but this was a great victory we should all remember and look at now and then. I'll take today's challenges on a global scale than those of my youth.

Enough words, let's just savor the picture. Two periods of time. One room in Warsaw, Poland.

The founding of the Warsaw Pact in 1955.

A 2016 meeting of NATO leaders.

Hat tip @englishrussia1.