You see what I mean, don't you? What exactly is the war in Yugoslavia/Serbia/Kosovo really about? Those Senators who are calling for the US to stay out, say that we have no national security issues and that it has nothing to do with us, and they may be right. But what the UN and NATO are really saying is that wherever there's a war, we are going to stop it. Amazing really that all of the modern world's most sophisticated military machines are now used solely to stop wars before they begin, or once they begin to stop them from getting bigger. War is now the enemy.

I can remember protesting the War in Vietnam, after spending two years in combat myself, and thinking of a world where exactly this situation would be coming true. We dreamed of a world where America's strength would be used to end war and aggression, where our soldiers were peacemakers, and where our nation stood tall as a nation of peace, not war. Well, folks, here we are. But still the dissenters have their say, and in general there is no general agreement. Most people in the United States don't even know where Kosovo is. They don't know what a Serb or an ethnic Albanian is. And they could care less. America now fights two wars: Iraq and Kosovo. Like OJ Simpson's "low speed" chase, America fights "no contact" low speed wars that are generaled like a softball game is coached. Here a little cruise missile, here let's fly those B-52's, and here, send in the F-18's and shake 'em up. I can imagine a pilot flying out of German in a gigantic B-52, achieving 60,000 feet, setting the auto pilot, dropping his bombs and coming home without another thought. "How'd go today, Bob?" "Routine flight, no problem." But the bombs fall hard on Kursumlija and Pristina.

Everyone's talking about this as a wonderful opportunity to "try out" the new stealth bombers, and all of the other "smart" weaponry that those people who brought you Nagasaki are working on now. But in the quiet of my little study here in Marblehead, I feel that we have finally focused in on the last enemy, the enemy within us. That aggressiveness, that murderous intent, the bully in the schoolyard is finally at center court, judged as unworthy, and being chased to ground for the last time. No one really cares about the ideologies involved here, it's the killing that must stop. War, stripped of its glory, stands alone as the last target in the cross hairs of humanity's progression. When you think about it, we are always climbing higher, albeit on a slippery slope. In the way-back machine there are scenes of people rallying for aggression and cheering it on, but you don't see a lot of that today. Some might see a namby-pambyism creeping in here, but when you think about it for a while, you'll know I'm right. The truth is that we are becoming more and more civilized as a species, and the Hitlers and Stalins and Maos are becoming fewer and fewer. Sometimes our politicians seem boring and we criticize our President for his morals, but that's better than world wars and death camps, and pogroms and genocide. Obviously, we are not completely free of tyrants and mass murderers, but we are more united against them. They say that America is the last great superpower, but that's misleading. America isn't really a country anymore (in the nationalistic sense). We are a xworld country. We are the first global country. We are becoming the world itself. It's a reverse takeover. America isn't taking over the world, the world is taking us over, like a lover who decides to settle down, the world is taking us in. It's inevitable, it's a right idea meeting no resistance, it's a world whose time has come.

There will be small wars and violence on a limited scale, but like the Berlin Wall coming down piece by piece until it was completely gone, the new world is coming into focus, pixel by pixel. The confidence of the American people seen in the way we conduct business and our lives, almost unaffected by anything, is a confidence well founded: it's the confidence of an unshakeable majority based on values so essential, so inalienable, that they will not be denied. Even war itself, will be banished. It's the American way.