As the saying goes, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. I don't think that sits any closer than looking at the youth today and having them not understand what that past really means.
As Mr. Windsor pointed out, there's a lot out there about World War I and World War II but not anything substantial about Bosnia or Yugoslavia. Afghanistan is front and centre because it was in the media all the time, but the individual aspects of Afghanistan are lost. They're still there. They're amongst us. They're amongst the veterans.
That's why people like Al Cameron, who has Veterans Voices, is recording all of these interviews with veterans. World War II, Korean, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Rwanda are all points in time that we still have a connection to because the people who are connected to them are still with us.
We can't look at a written word and understand the emotion that goes behind it. A guy I served with in Cyprus killed himself six months after we got back. People don't know how much of an impression that has on us until they actually have an opportunity to speak to us. I want to get to a point in our lifetime where I can go into a school on Remembrance Day to talk about something and not have some kid come up to me and ask, “Hey, did you kill anybody?” I would have never considered saying that to a veteran coming into my school when I was a kid because it was still very present in our minds.
There's a long, long road.