They call it the "Good War," one supposes, in order to differentiate it from all the really bad wars we’ve been fighting – and losing – lately: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the future wars our political class has up its collective sleeve. I call it the Worst War, because it fathered all the ones to come: it was the war that set us, finally, on the road to empire – and, as Garet Garrett put it years ago, that road was marked with "a sign that reads ‘No U-Turns.’"

The war that killed millions, and finally killed our old republic, haunts us still. It lingers in the headlines, or at least in the op-eds, whenever a new "threat" rears its head: the dictator-of-the-moment, targeted for early retirement by the warlords of Washington, is invariably likened to Hitler – and that is the signal for the Tomahawk missiles to fly.