Donald Trump frequently complained about America’s endless wars. But he neglected to mention the timeline that drives them.
When we bring one war to a close, we immediately and literally sow the seeds of the next one to come.
When Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders came home after the Spanish-American War in 1898, they sired the male children who ripened into men just in time to ship out to World War I in 1918. Those who survived World War I came home and made another crop of young men who then headed out to World War II in Europe in 1942.
These “Greatest Generation” soldiers then came home and procreated a large new crop of boomers who ripened in time for plucking in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Those who didn’t die in Vietnam came home and seeded the crop who were coaxed into Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The unnamed generation born in the 2010s right on through the pandemic and beyond can’t yet know what the nation has in store for them. But we know. Let’s call them Gen W, for what they will be spending their time doing.
Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross