"The chance I was afforded, starting in 1989, to write a column every week for two-and-a-half decades for an important newspaper in the capital of the most powerful of nations at a critical moment in the history of Western civilization was more than a privilege. It also amounted to a splendid platform from which to contribute materially to the debate about the national security and foreign policy issues of that era. Seen in hindsight, the resulting columns, published by the Washington Times from 1989-2014, represent a kind of geological core sample on those issues. I have tried to down-select for this volume from more than 1200 of them the ones that seem to me either to retain interesting insights into important past events and/or to be of continuing relevance to those still unfolding. This selection, taken together, amounts to a mosaic of commentary on the threats America has been facing, evaluations of the efforts - or lack of such efforts - to address them and my own prescriptions as to what should be done. They provide, moreover, a sort of prism through which to calibrate the trajectory we have been on for some time and to make informed assessments of where we are likely to find ourselves if we don't learn from and apply the lessons to be drawn from our recent history. One thing is clear from these snapshots and, indeed, from the tale of humankind writ large: Deferring action in the face of aggressive evil is a formula for worse outcomes at higher costs, in terms of national treasure and, more importantly, lives."