3 more things

Major Danny Sjursen's Watching My Students Turn into Soldiers of Empire is a sad and excruciating read. Sjursen, a West Point graduate who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then spent 3 years as an assistant professor of history back at West Point, considers what missions to which his former students will soon be assigned.

Now, here’s the rub: given the range of missions that my former students are sure to participate in, I can’t help but feel frustration. After all, it should be clear 18 years after the 9/11 attacks that almost none of those missions have a chance in hell of succeeding. Worse yet, the killing my beloved students might take part in (and the possibility of them being maimed or dying) won’t make America any safer or better. They are, in other words, doomed to repeat my own unfulfilling, damaging journey – in some cases, on the very same ground in Iraq and Afghanistan where I fought.

Please read the whole thing.

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Rod Dreher on one of my favorite books, Koestler' Darkness at Noon.

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And N. T. Wright's new book, The New Testament in its World.