Twenty Years of "IF"...

From 2001 to 2021 was more than a bumpy road

• If, on September 10, 2001 you had told me that the USA, which from 1979 to 1989 had fought a secret war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, would for the next nearly 20 years fight a second full-scale war there, with up to 100,000 troops on the ground at times, I would have thought you mad.  
• If, that day, you had told me that the U.S. would, in 2002, set up a prison in — no kidding — Cuba run by the U.S. military, where prisoners from a “global war on terror” could be brought for anything but a version of Nazi concentration camp, I would have thought you were joking. 
• If you had also predicted that this camp would still be open 19 years later and people are being tortured, I would have laughed in your face.  
• If that day you had told me that, thanks to the development of something called a remotely piloted aircraft, or drone, an American president would functionally become an assassin-in-chief, I would have just shaken my head and walked away. 
• If that very day you had assured me that, in March 2021, the White House would still be fighting such wars with congressional “authorisations” 18 or 19 years old that authorised nothing of the sort, I would have classified you as a genuine nut.
• If, back then, you had predicted that the U.S. military could wage conflicts in distant lands for almost two decades without actually winning any of them I would have recommend you a psychiatrist to clean your mind.
  

And yet, of course, all of the above did indeed happen and is, in fact, still ongoing. 
When it comes to foreign policy and future perspectives of the USA, the signs aren’t wildly hopeful. President Biden just opened future relations with one of this country’s two “near-peer threats” (as the U.S. military likes to call them) by agreeing publicly that Vladimir Putin was a soul-less “killer.” 
Meanwhile, his secretary of state and national security advisor had a distinctly rocky meeting in Alaska with their Chinese counterparts from that other near-peer threat, China. 
And now add to this wise policy the omnipotence of the medical experts who do not get tired to explain to you for 14 months that you can only escape the risk of dying from Covid-19 if you get vaccinated.Then add the trillions of damage that the national economies must somehow cover and do this with ever new debt and money printing, - then you know what will come out in the end. 
In this sense I put the saga of climate change for the time being to the files and wait for reason and insight.