20 Years
Has it really been twenty years? The calendar says yes, so who am I to argue?
I'm not sure what Josh would have made of the current state of our world, two decades on. I remember him writing in support of our invasion of Iraq in 2003 - a detail I alluded to in my tribute novel "The Waiting Room" - on the grounds that the Iraqi people had suffered under a terrible tyrant for long enough and deserved better. No argument from me on that one, even if I might argue the means of their deliverance at the barrel of U.S. guns, and while they've never known another dictator as bad as Saddam in all the years since, it's hardly been an easy time for them either, during our occupation or the time that followed, which included the ISIS/ISIL threat. Things are better there, but it's hardly the democratic paradise our invasion's architects promised.
I wish I could say it was better elsewhere, but in recent years democracy seems to be in serious retreat globally as autocracy and tyranny push hard to make slow and steady gains. We came very close to losing our own democracy two years ago, at least at the national level, and that danger isn't past us yet. And what's happening in Ukraine represents the epitome of this sad phenomenon - and I suspect Josh and I would be very much on the same side of THAT issue. A victory for tyranny and naked aggression in Ukraine would make the world infinitely less safe, not just for the region, not just for the West, but for everyone.
So here we are, twenty years later. No flying cars, no jetpacks, and the same old Internet that we had back in 2003 - just faster, more vitriolic and more divisive than ever. Let's hope we do better in the next twenty years than we did in the last twenty.