Tom, how well I remember the faces of George H.W. Bush and James Baker as the Berlin wall came down. They were stunned and horrified, their faces drained of blood. No more big, bad Reds to justify the big, bad regime in the US. It would take our rulers some time before they could come up with another foreign enemy under our beds.

NB: Communism was used to justify the most bloodthirsty regimes in history. But as economic basket cases, they never threatened the US, and indeed tended to be far less imperialistic than the US and Britain, which—as Hans Hoppe points out—have the capitalistic resources to wage war and rule the globe, at least for a time.

Now we are supposed to think that a few hundred foreign “terrorists” (private groups using the state’s war tactics, who were originally trained and funded by the US and its satellites to fight the Russians in Afghanistan) threaten Wichita, and justify a fascist regime in DC. Just like the Cold War that Truman started.