> At the end of the Cold War, I enlisted in the Navy because it was a good opportunity; there was no ambiguity regarding the bad guys; the military leadership was good; the elected leadership was generally tolerable.

Sounds like you received a healthy dose of cold war propaganda.

> I'm no longer able to encourage the youth to follow in my footsteps, as the opposite of the above is generally the case.

You sure about that? Because the same leadership, military and political, are in power as they were at the end of the cold war. Nothing changed in the US after the cold war because we won.

I think you have to come to terms on who the bad guys real were. The soviets weren't the evil empire. The evil empire is the one that beat the soviets. Or maybe the eviler empire beat the evil empire.