In 1966, roughly three quarters of the American population supported the war effort, convinced that containing communism was a national imperative. The narrative was clear: stop communism at all costs. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the framework didn't disappear. It simply adapted. The war on communism became the war on terrorism, but the underlying strategy remained largely intact. Remove one enemy, insert another, and the foreign and military policy continues along the same trajectory.
This isn't a conspiracy. It's pattern recognition. The geopolitical machinery that was built during the Cold War didn't dismantle itself when the threat changed. It recalibrated. Understanding how public consensus is shaped around these narratives, and how quickly one existential threat can be replaced by another, is essential to understanding the last seventy years of American policy. The question isn't whether the threats were real. The question is whether the response was proportional, and who benefited from maintaining the infrastructure of perpetual conflict.