Anxiety must be strangely addictive, because Americans can’t seem to get enough of it. We enjoy a measure of national security and personal safety that is the envy of people around the world—rom Ukraine to Syria to Nigeria. But many of us manage to feel perpetually endangered, in good times and bad.
One of these people, surprisingly, is Martin Dempsey, a retired four-star Army general who stepped down last year as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In an interview in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, he solemnly said of the present moment, “It’s the most dangerous period of my lifetime.”
Clearly, Dempsey went to a school where students weren’t drilled in hiding under desks in case nuclear war ever broke out. Apparently, he forgets the Soviet shoot-down of a Korean airliner in 1983. And would anyone trade today for Sept. 12, 2001? Steve Chapman critiques Dempsey’s fearmongering.
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