Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, I imagine many historians will be taking out their chisels and stones in an attempt to capture the moment within the historical record. Most military histories hyphenate years of conflict and inscribe them on a tombstone formed by parentheses. When we walk through history’s graveyard, for example, we find: World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945) among the many rows of markers annotating warfare.
