"Doomed US-built wartime road finds new life; China working to make use of route to India" by Los Angeles Times | January 4, 2009
MYITKYINA, Burma - .... More than 15,000 US soldiers who put their backs into the punishing work that many thought was futile. In a little more than two years, they completed the road from India to the western Chinese city of Kunming. The United States spent almost $149 million to build it and, at the request of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, it was named the Stilwell Road, after US General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the abrasive commander of Allied troops in the region...
Isn't it nice that U.S. taxpayer dollars went to build a road for China and India? I know it was a long time ago, but some things never change.
More than half a century later, China is working to resurrect it as the first major overland trade route since World War II with India, where business leaders, politicians, and bureaucrats also are pressing their government to formally commit itself to the road as a link between the world's two most populous nations.
If China is moving closer to India... Jesus, who is going to be on our side in the WWIII other than Israel, AmeriKa -- and do you really want to fight and die for them?
In 2005, Indian and Chinese survey teams began mapping out plans to rebuild the road. China has done all the reconstruction work, paving dozens of miles with granite stones packed into dirt. The men who built the road weren't honored for their feat until 2004, when the Defense Department marked African American History Month at Florida A&M University.
The outright racism of U.S. society always boggles my mind. That's why the slef-righteous swill (about so many things) bothers me so.
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