War in peace

Am currently reading William Nash's Secretariat. When I came to the part about how Penny Chenery-Tweedy attended collage in the 1940s, it struck me how normal life could go on relatively* smoothly in the US while the rest of the world was at war, entire cities attacked and bombed, disrupting among others schooling for countless children just as it was here for my father and his brother and sisters in Manila. Americans have no idea how blessed they were at that time to be spared such atrocities that they take such peaceful and secure times for granted. It's no wonder they can invade other countries like Afghanistan and Iraq without batting so much of an eyelash. And that's also why the events that transpired in that fateful day in September 2001 were such a wake up call for them.

* I'm saying relatively here, being perfectly aware of course of how American families were affected when they sent their fathers and sons out to fight in the war.