In the immediate aftermath of the Christmastime attacks, the population of the United States pretty much vapor locked.  No-one went shopping, no-one sent their kids to school, even if the schools were open, and for the most part, we stuck around our homes and watched the news for a few days.  Churches, on the other hand, were packed full, although with openly armed parishioners in front of more than a few of them.  Like I said, no-one reported retaliation against Muslims in the United States, but after the relative calm that occurred after 9/11, that wasn’t much of a surprise.

Of course, the economy took a hit, with a rather sharp recession hitting us that winter and spring.  The retail and service economies pretty much collapsed for a few quarters, which sent ripples back into transportation and manufacturing.  This caused the soft landing of the Chinese economy to turn into a crash.  The Communist regime had wisely stayed out of the war in Korea, but the sudden drop of demand in its largest export market sent shock waves through their overheated economy.   There was unrest, most of which was put down quite violently by the PLA, and the Chinese government almost fell in a military coup about a year into the war.  Since then, they’ve slowly built back up, with more focus on their domestic market, and as our economy slowly recovered, so did theirs.

Like China, Russia pretty much stayed out of the war.  There have been a few incidents in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the Chechen war has flared up again, but that bleeding sore would have been there no matter what.

In other words, Iran pretty much stands alone, but they are a tough nut to crack if you’re not willing to use a hammer.  For one reason or another, the President chose to not utilize overwhelming force, nuclear weapons, or a ground invasion to deal with the Iranians.  It’s been a long war, and there’s no end in sight.

The morning after the declaration of war, we had something in America that hadn’t been seen since 1941 – long lines at military recruiters.  I, along with a lot of veterans, got my DD-214 and resume out of the safe and headed to the nearest recruiter to sign back up.  We were joined by a large number of young men and women who wanted to leave their colleges and jobs to serve.  Unfortunately for me, they weren’t looking for 41-year-old Russian linguists and computer nerds, so I was turned down, but a lot of younger veterans and those with more critical skills were accepted.  A lot of the first time enlistees had to be put on a waiting list to be sent to training, but it’s a credit to them that when they were called months or even years later, they almost all still volunteered.

China and South Korea are occupying what used to be North Korea, but we have been providing a lot of material and personnel support.  Even though the communist regime was pretty much gutted within days, a lot of people feared that what was left of the DPRK armed forces would attack the South.  Luckily, that didn’t happen.  Once Pyongyang and the top level of leadership were eliminated, most North Korean soldiers, including officers, just walked away.  I’ve read reports that some officers tried to hold their units together and fight, but those officers were outnumbered and short-lived.  There are occasional reports of communist forces coming down out of the mountains and shooting up a checkpoint or assassinating some official or another, but they are becoming rare.  Without support from China and with the North Korean people learning that it’s better to be fed than to live in a worker’s paradise, their numbers are dwindling.

Of course, our government didn’t let this crisis go to waste.  Even though a lot of the blame for the Christmastime attacks fell on the Department of Homeland Security, it got a big shot in the fiscal arm and has spread its reach a lot further into the nation.  The Border Patrol has become fully militarized, and the Mexican border zone has pretty much become a free fire zone.    Canada, for their part, has rounded up several hundred Hezbollah and Iranian agents, all of whom were extradited to the United States.  Those trials are still going on, and will probably stretch out for years.  There’s also a new “electronic fence” and a lot more in-person patrols going on along the Canadian border.

The Department of Education made a play to get its own security force to guard schools and such, but that was shut down by Congress after the state governors collectively agreed to form the Home Guard.  The Home Guard, distinct from the National Guard, is a collection of volunteers who keep watch over schools, busses, factories, and the like.  It’s composed mostly of veterans who didn’t, for one reason or another, go back in the military.  Most of its members do their duties armed in one form or another, although some states discourage that.  Kentucky, on the other hand, has no issue with us carrying whatever gun we choose to, so long as we carry a gun.  The Home Guard was formed in the months after the attacks, and was instrumental in thwarting the second wave, which struck on the six month anniversary of the Christmastime attacks.

The Iranians tried to catch lightning twice, but their second attempt pretty much fizzled.  The combination of increased security, a more aware population, and Home Guard units standing watch made sure that most of the people who tried to repeat the success of the December attacks met with a rather sticky end.  One woman, who made the mistake of hesitating as she walked up to a bus station before blowing herself and a bunch of students and their mothers apart was beaten to death and pretty much ripped limb from limb by the parents of the children she’d tried to murder.  No-one bothered the school bus I was riding on that day, but one bus in Louisville got shot up before its attackers were killed by LMPD and the Guardsman on the bus.  Luckily, only the Guardsman was hurt in the attack, with all of the children having learned their lessons during drills on what to do in the event of an attack.  The use of busses has greatly expanded in the years since the attacks, as most schools got rid of drop off and pick up on school grounds, and those that kept it made it an ordeal to get through security.  The home and community schooling movement has had a big shot in the arm from all this.  The number of children being educated by their families has skyrocketed.

The Assad regime collapsed under the weight of Israeli bombardment and rebel ground forces.  Once Assad himself had boarded a plane and headed to Tehran, the bloodbath began.  People who had either supported the regime or were members of groups that had supported the regime were hunted down and publicly executed.  Of course, once the government was gone and old scores were settled, the factions that had made up the “Free Syrian Army” turned on each other and fought over control of the country and the huge military stockpile that Assad left behind.  The civil war there has dragged on for years, but it looks like the worst of it is over now that the sides have bled each other white and the weapons depots are pretty much empty.

Once Syria was neutralized, Israel turned on Gaza and the West Bank.  Every block in Gaza that had a rocket launcher on it was leveled, but even Egypt has praised Israel for minimizing civilian casualties.  Hamas was gutted, with what survived of its leadership getting the heck out of Dodge just ahead of the Israeli army.  Unfortunately, the Israeli answer to what to do about the Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza has pretty much amounted to ethnic cleansing.  With the memory of rocket bombardments that distracted them from countering chemical attacks against their civilians fresh in their minds, Tel Aviv had little compunction about telling the residents of these areas to get out and stay out.  The usual bleeding hearts at the U.N. and E.U. made noises about it, but the answer from the Israeli prime minister, given in front of a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, boiled down to “go pound sand”. Israel still has to deal with regular terrorist attacks, and their relations with most of the E.U. are very tense, but they’re no worse off than they were a decade ago.

As for Iran, well, things haven’t gone as well for us.  After turning Natanz and other nuclear and command installations into rubble, the President called off the dogs.  With Syria in shambles, Israel ejecting hundreds of thousands of people, and the northern half of the Korean peninsula in flames, he didn’t want to commit resources for an invasion of Iran and continued bombing would have done no further needful damage.  Of course, Tehran crowed about facing down the Great Satan, and low-level terrorist activity against our forces throughout the mideast became a regular event, as did terrorism in the continental United States.

Their puppet government in Iraq protested the use of their airspace in the initial phase of the war, but once Iran was unable to provide them with much support, the government in Baghdad pretty much dried up and blew away.  I understand that a separatist movement in the Kurdish region is gaining momentum, and if Kurdistan leaves, then the rest of Iraq will probably shatter. The Kurds seem to be the only people actually following through on Iraq’s declaration of war against the Iranians, with regular raids and artillery duels across their border.  If I had to choose my allies in the region, they’d be much higher on my list than the southern Iraqis.

We’ve spent the last couple of years playing cat and mouse with the Iranians.  We make an air raid or night-time smash and grab against them, they send a group of suicide bombers against our soldiers or try to kill more of our civilians.  The new normal in the heartland is armed Guardsmen on the streets and citizens watching for the shopping bag that gets left behind or the mother wearing a coat that’s too big or too heavy for the weather.  The term “Balance of Terror” has been used more than once.

Right now, the President is holding out against making further commitments until after the election.  He says he doesn’t want to saddle the next person to hold the office with a battle plan he put together. My gut tells me he doesn’t want his party to lose political points because we’re bogged down in a land war in Central Asia during the election.  The President sent up a few trial balloons about putting off the 2016 elections due to the war and concerns about safety at polling places, but that was met with widespread howling.  His party didn’t do well in the mid-term elections, but the presidential election later this year is expected to be very close.  A war hasn’t changed the fact that almost half the electorate supports one party and most of the other half supports the other.

So there we are.  North Korea is slowly coming out of the dark ages, although it was and still is a bigger basket case than any of the Eastern European countries were after the fall of communism.  Our country is still strong, but has a lot more ‘security’ baked into its domestic cake.  Iranian forces have been sparring with our allies in Turkey, and there’s a possibility that a full-blown ground war will erupt along that front, but that remains to be seen.  The Turks probably wouldn’t need or ask for our help anyway.

It’s strange that the Third World War would be both so bloody minded and so long-lived.  If you’d asked me the day after the attacks if Tehran would still exist almost four years later, I would have asked if you were crazy.  Now, after a few weeks of heavy fighting and over three years of fancy footwork, I have no idea when the war will be over.  Girlie Bear will be commissioned into the Army Medical Corps soon, and her two older brothers are both in the service, one in the Navy, and one in the Air Force.  Who knows what the next few years will hold for them?