Once more, the U.S. is at war.\u00a0 We have attacked Libya.\u00a0 President Obama has released a couple of statements about this conflict which I find confusing.\u00a0 I saw them in headlines only, but one was that we were going to remove Gadhafi (Khaddafy?), the country’s leader, from power while another said this was not the objective of the U.N. Coalition forces.\u00a0 I confess I am not fully conversant with the situation, but what I have read sounds like it is Egypt, part 2.\u00a0 That is, Libya is having a rebellion inspired in part by the recent internal conflict in Egypt which got its ruler removed from office.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Conflict is a big part of the history of the world.\u00a0 There is an old adage most people are familiar with which states the winner writes the history books, a statement which suggests history is all<\/em> about conflicts of one sort or another.\u00a0 That suggestion aside, it is the survivors of killing events, be they natural disasters or war, who pass on the legacies of what occurred.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For example, there’s the building of the first trans-continental railroad.\u00a0 This project might not have succeeded when it did without the help of Chinese immigrants.\u00a0 Many of these people died along the way, brutally abused or neglected by the white men in charge of the project.\u00a0 What tale might they have told of how things got done?\u00a0 The slow trickle of facts from their descendants and the descendants of the white men who forged the way along with them has given us an idea of how it got built, but one has to wonder if there aren’t still important details left out.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anonymity is becoming a rare commodity.\u00a0 In today’s world, everyone is accounted for.\u00a0 Although it may take Japan a few years to sort it out, I am betting nearly everyone killed in the recent earthquake \/ tsunami disaster will be accounted for.\u00a0 The Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington has not had any recent additions, and in fact its last addition was eventually removed.\u00a0 An unknown soldier placed in the crypt from the Vietnam war was exhumed and identified.\u00a0 Thanks to modern DNA testing, it is believed every Vietnam casualty will eventually be identified.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And so, history marches on.\u00a0 Once upon a time soldiers marched off to war, got killed, and their failure to return was sometimes a mystery.\u00a0 There are many still missing in action from the Vietnam war, but someday I am certain the missing will be found.\u00a0 The Korean war was probably the last major conflict where U.S. servicemen will have gone missing and whose exact fate will never be known.\u00a0 Perhaps one day their fates will be known, too, and the timeline will be moved back to WWII.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This brings us back to my original point, after a fashion.\u00a0 The old adage I mentioned at a higher level means history is about what is remembered.\u00a0 We are remembering more and more as time goes on.\u00a0 The dead have stronger legacies than they once did.\u00a0 I have high hopes that one day the losers may have something to say about history as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once more, the U.S. is at war.\u00a0 We have attacked Libya.\u00a0 President Obama has released a couple of statements about this conflict which I find confusing.\u00a0 I saw them in headlines only, but one was that we were going to remove Gadhafi (Khaddafy?), the country’s leader, from power while another said this was not the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":420,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}