9-11 Memorial NYC
One reason for marking fateful days in history is to remember how much the world has changed in your own lifetime.
Fifteen years ago today, 11 September 2009, I was a soldier on a one-year deployment to the Iraq War with the US Army.
Fifteen years before that, in 1994, I was a civilian still not quite believing the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991.
Fifteen years before that in 1979, I was tank commander on the East-West border in Germany waiting for the Soviet invasion of that never happened.
Fifteen years before that I was an 11-year-old 5th grader at Robin Hood Elementary School in Stoneham, Massachusetts. Our school was a fallout shelter. Nuclear war was a shadow on life during the Cold War.
The world has changed a lot in some ways, and not at all in others.
In just over a week, I will be advocating for Ukraine in the US Congress. Russia invaded. The attack I was waiting for for the first four decades of my life happened in Ukraine.
Huge changes, some sad consistency.
Glory to Ukraine!
