Maybe the younger generation hasn't experienced the back yard bomb shelters, the evacuation routes, early warning systems, and kindergarten lessons about hiding under tables and desks or diving into roadside ditches and culverts, but most of us remember. It's even recorded in amusing movies from Dr. Strangelove to Blast From The Past.

Are we now supposed to be quaking in our boots because Iraq "might" have weapons of mass destruction? How about China? India? Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Syria? Iran? Cuba? Sri Lanka? Even the Bahamas?

Wasn't Pindling the dictator/ruler of the Bahamas since they got their independence in 1972 and until he died two years ago? Was he a good guy? How could he have been a good guy when he was in power almost as long as Castro. That doesn't seem very democratic. Should we expect conch shell weapons of mass destruction raining down on our Southeastern Coast?

And how about Haiti? Maybe it's time for another mock invasion or landing another armada on the shores of Granada to rescue some serious medical students. A war without media coverage because barefoot kids were on the beach meeting our over burdened troops with Coca Colas and more medals were awarded the survivors of friendly fire than were passed out in the second World War.

Maybe it's just time to win one for the lizard. One of my conservative young members wrote to tell me that she and her friends have started to think of George W. as a changeling lizard from another planet. The alien bit is a little hard to buy, but now every time I see his daily television show his face seems to transform before me. Until now, I just thought that he had overcome a stuttering problem and it was a little odd that he walks as though he has golf balls under his armpits and might be trying to swagger like John Wayne. And isn't it nice to see the helicopters back on the White House lawn?

Didn't we invent nuclear weapons? Haven't we improved them ten fold? Who's got most of the weapons of mass destruction in the world? How did everybody else get some of these? Do you think that high school kid who built an "A" bomb in his father's garage has been selling them to the rest of the world since 1956?

What difference does it make if everybody else does have weapons of mass destruction? Oh, of course, Sadaam Hussein is an evil devil monster who used biological weapons on his own people twenty years ago so we just know that he's going to use them on us if we don't get rid of him. Ironically, we're reminded of this by our president speaking to us from his conference in, of all places, we-ain't-coming-out Waco. And Janet Sterno is running for governor of Florida.

In direct violation of the Boland Act, Ollie North sold weapons to Iran in order to raise money for a deposed dictator's old National Guard masquerading as "freedom fighters" in Nicaragua. The country where Ronald Reagan wanted to fulfill his dream of a new canal built where it should have been built in the first place. Ollie was released on a technicality, ran for Senator, has his own radio show, and now sells stun guns and riot control equipment to every police department in the country, thanks to directives from the new Office of Homeland Security.

The new stun guns manufactured by Ollie's company, Guardian Industries, deliver 250,000 volts instead of a mere fifty thousand and, as Joe Baker puts it: "If it doesn't kill you, at least you won't know who you are for a couple of days."

And how about the new COIL weapon that is being installed on all Apache helicopters? This Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser vaporizes people, plants, and anything living just like a Buck Rogers ray gun. There's bound to be a big world market for this new weapon of mass destruction. We just keep cranking 'em out.

Pogo was right when he said: "We have met the enemy and he is us." After backing out of the ABM Treaty without leaving something better behind, declaring a first strike initiative, and declaring war on anyone who "might" have thoughts of hurting us, we can no longer claim to be the guys in white hats, the heroes, the "don't tread on me" good guys of the world. We've become a nation that wants war and may, in fact, need war in order to support a weapons producing economy. How many years of peace have we had since World War Two?

Let's see, if you count Korea, Viet Nam, and the Cold War that ended in 1988, then add in our first justifiable war against Iraq, and the Bosnia/Herzegovina/Albania uranium mine democratic migration conflict, there can't be more than seven or eight years of peace since 1945. We always have somebody to hate somewhere.

If you throw in embargoes, the modern version of laying siege to a castle, then there's hardly been any peace at all.

And don't even mention the War on Drugs. There's another one we've never had any intention of winning. If we were to win, the economy would go into a tail spin.

Just how long did we figure we could go around the world selectively taking names and kicking ass before someone brought death and destruction to our shores?

And don't give me that crap about the responsibility of a super power. If the fate of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain, even the British Empire, and other old superpowers is what we've got to look forward to, then you can have it. None of it jives with what I grew up believing "the land of opportunity" to be.