I came across Nancy’s Apology, a great blog by a Quaker woman living in Canada. She has a wonderful post on the Christian underpinnings of Harry Potter which I found quite interesting. Go on, read it. I’ll wait.

She writes a little more recently on how wars end, and how there’s no end in sight for the one we’re in today.

As I commented on her post, this makes me a little sad and a little afraid. The drumbeat towards conflict with Iran is getting louder each day, a course that would be insane for our country and the entire Middle-east and South Asia.

We’ve been watching Ken Burns’ “The War” at home over the past few days (God bless TiVo), and I’m struck with the feeling about, even with the nuances that Burns provides on the “really, really bad parts” (and the terrible, brutal, and unnecessarily cruel things some American soldiers did), one cannot help but feel an enormous contrast between “the necessary War” that was WWII, and the utterly unnecessary conflicts we’re engaged in now.

Yet, as many have said “they declared war on us”.

Even six years later I lack the clarity to really parse what’s happening in the world. I feel a weird sense of nostalgia for “back then”, where America had a moral compass in the world. Now as I think about my country I feel more a sense of shame, confusion, sadness, and anxiety than any sense of pride or justification.

Does that make me a traitor? I’m sure Ann Coulter would say so.