Fighting Intangible Enemies

The lingering memories of the burning Twin Towers are the reason Americans so readily backed U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The words “9/11” were all the justification needed to keep the military there for the next 20 years. The 9/11 planners, at least, provided a more visceral enemy than the boogeyman that drove the Vietnam war — communism. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower warned that the fall of French Indochina would give communists a foothold. As the ideology took root in one country, it would spread to all the others… and soon all of Asia would be under red flags. Today, the “domino theory” is about as fashionable as poodle skirts or brogues with spats… mostly because it doesn’t make a lick of sense.