What We Have Learned....

[exedir]

A lot it could be said about what others will do with events that might otherwise would have turned out differently, and differently than what we would have wanted them to be.

So, it is with the so-called Arab Spring. And yes, it has been over a full summer,fall, winter, spring since the self-immolation of the Tunisia food vendor who could not get a license. And what has started has not begun to end the turmoil, change and disruption that was caused by the idea that change and hope could move people to anticipate a better future, a democratic one. Yet, it appears that the future is much like the past, a Egyptian military dictatorship. Nassar, Sadot, Mubarik have marked the over fifty year history of power and politics in Egypt. And as restrictive and oppressive those regimes were, they still left a balance of security and peace that allowed almost irreconcilable social elements in Egypt's make up to coexist, mostly peacefully and allow stability and growth, abide with corruption and patronage of those inside the regime.

Of course, we can't never say the path of a liberal, democratic republic is easy, quite the opposite. Nor, can we say that one path is the true path of human events when many have been taken in the past as each society has to experience both the birth and the rising of the institutions that lead people to accept, respect and nurture those institutions. 

As we witness what is happening in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other nations across the world, we can look back on own path.

Today, we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the end of the greatest battle fought on our continent, the Battle of Gettysburg.  

This afternoon, 150 years ago, the surviving, wounded, brave men of Pickett's division move back across the tree line from where the march began, and where Lee greeted those troops by telling them, "It is my fault, it is all my fault..." as Lee asked Pickett to rally his division, Pickett is said to have replied, "General, I have no division", and end off the battle as each army withdrew with its losses. 

The Battle of Gettysburg did not end the war, the Civil War continued for almost a year and half more, as the Union army leadership fall to US Grant while more lives were lost in bloody, wrenching battles that lead to the end, started at Gettysburg. In the American Civil War more than 620,000 lives were lost on both sides which today would represent the lost of six million lives not including the causalities that survived the war and the other lives lost and causalities created as collateral damage.

As to the point of the democracy and the republic as to its construction and continuation, in the address at the dedication of the battlefield cemetery Lincoln stated the objective of what was being accomplished in the battle and war....

"...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

[exedir]

To add to this commemoration of the country's independence and the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg is the last encamp of the Civil War veterans at Gettysburg in 1938 in this edited newsreel of that day....

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