June of 2025: Sleepwalking to War?

O well may I weep for yestreen in my sleep,
We stood bride and bridegroom together.
But his arms & breath were as cold as the death
And his heart’s blood ran red on the heather

I trusted my ain love last night in the broom
My Donald wha’ loves me sae dearly
For the morrow he will march for Edinburgh toon
Tae fecht for his King and Prince Charlie

As dauntless in battle as tender in love
He’d yield ne’er a foot tae the foeman
But never again frae the field o’ the slain
Tae his Moira will he come by Loch Lomond

The thistle may bloom, the King hae his ain
And fond lovers may meet in the gloamin’
And me and my true love will yet meet again
Far above the bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond

As I write these words, it is June 22, 2025; in the traditional calendar, it is Sunday in the Octave of Corpus Christi and the feast day of Sts. Alban, John Fisher, and Thomas More. On Thursday, here in Trumau, the International Theological Institute and the local church of St. John the Baptist put on a wonderful Corpus Christi Procession. 

Yesterday was the ITI’s graduation day. After a lovely High Mass and reception, the academic ritual was conducted with the usual pomp, as the proud graduates received their various and hard-earned degrees at the hands of a truly distinguished faculty. As ever, I felt inspired to be part of such a family. This was followed by a festive dinner and ball; my day ended fairly late.

This morning, when I arose and checked my email, I learned that Mr. Trump had ordered the bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran. My first thought was that we might need to send the emperor of Japan a note of apology, saying that we now understood about Pearl Harbor and realized we had overreacted back in 1941. Moreover, a presidential commencement of war without a congressional declaration is unconstitutional; but then, one cannot blame Trump for following a trail blazed long ago by Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Obama. After all, we have not had a declared war since WWII—only Police Actions. 

For reasons I did not yet understand, I got a bit teary. But I pulled myself together and walked over to the castle for the morning Byzantine Liturgy. The chapel doors were open, so that there were chairs for the overflow crowd in the castle courtyard. I took my seat in the lovely, shaded courtyard. As the serene Byzantine chants echoed through the chapel out to us, I tried to sort through my thoughts. It occurred to me that this delightful June reminded me of the stories my grandparents and other survivors of that era told me about that last, glorious summer of 1914. 

American, British, Austrian, Russian, French, and German elders of my acquaintance all assured my youthful self that for them it had been a wonderful time, better than any they had seen since. Countess Fingall, in her memoirs, summed up all these folk had to tell me: 

I suppose that the following Season of 1914 was the gayest and most magnificent that London has ever seen. To me there was something terrible about it. I felt it at the time. The wild extravagance, the money spending. There were two or three parties every night and invitations were sent, through mutual friends, to absolute strangers…Well, we danced on the edge of an abyss. And a good many of the young people who danced so madly that Season were to be swallowed up by it. Those who reached the other side were to be many years wiser and older.

These and many other reflections crossed my mind as I looked at the young people around me. My father would get teary-eyed over his friends and relations lost in the Second War; but my generation—although a number of our older brothers went to Vietnam—was not blooded in the same way. Most of my peers who have died have done so because of ruined health and fast living; my own military experience was strictly peacetime, and the wartime wreckage I have seen has been purely as a journalist. Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I have feared that the great powers would sleepwalk into war, as the elected representatives of the people did in 1914—and that today’s youth would pay the bulk of the price (although the rest of us would surely feel it).

All of this was swirling in my mind after the Liturgy ended, and I mingled with the happy young people. At coffee, the young man who was pouring me coffee asked me how I was feeling. I know him and his family well, and I was at a bit of a loss as to how to reply honestly. He had not heard about the bombing, so I told him about it, said I was not happy about it, and speculated as to how it might all play out. But, of course, I could not go on about the rest of it I have shared with you, dear reader, lest I sounded ridiculous and soppy. 

In the end, we agreed that prayer was necessary. But I could not help but think of him, his brother (who was nearby, and with whom I had a similar conversation), and all their schoolmates going through what our previous generations have gone through, and some of what I have seen, and shudder.

So, I went back to my apartment and gave the whole thing a bit more of a think. To begin with, we would not be where we are if, as President Nixon put it, we had not “greased the skids” for the Shah. Of course, there are those who will say he was an American puppet because of our role in the overthrow of Mosaddegh with CIA help—but that is to forget the alternative (given Mosaddegh’s dismissal of parliament and dictatorial ways, and pro-Soviet orientation), there would have been a Soviet presence in the Persian Gulf. Of course, that situation was the result of the Anglo-Soviet overthrown of Reza I back in 1941. In any case, we would be in a very different world if the House of Pahlavi still sat on the Peacock Throne in Tehran.

But we are where we are and must live with what is. So, what can the current Iranian leadership do? If they surrender, in all likelihood they shall be out of a job; so that is probably not going to happen. If it did, we would be smart if we supported the restoration of Shah Reza II. But in this area, stupid is in our political DNA, and as Bush Sr. vetoed restorations in Bulgaria and Romania, Clinton refused aid to the Monarchists in Serbia, and Bush Jr. echoed his father in vetoing the return of the kings in Afghanistan and Iraq, it must be supposed Trump would follow in their august footsteps. More likely, there would be unrest of some kind—a disintegration of Iran and resultant chaos being the most horrible possibility.

The next and likelier possibility would be to try to get Russia and/or China involved on their side. If successful, this would of course bring the whole World War III scenario far closer, with Tom Lehrer’s “Good-bye Mom, I’m off to drop the bomb” due for revival. Doubtless, Ukraine and Taiwan would also enter into the whole mess, and God alone knows what might come out of that mess. Should this happen, then we would indeed be enjoying that summer of 1914, however long it may last until the internet disruption and weapons exchange.

If that does not occur, then the only conventional military response Iran shall have would be to close the Strait of Hormuz and cut off Europe’s oil. That might have two foreseeable results, apart from Iran attacking our allies in the Persian Gulf. I cannot imagine an American president committing land troops to Iran after the exciting experience of the Forever War. But we could—if Iran is unsupported by Russia and China—blow her fleet to smithereens; we are fairly good at that. Or, the president might choose to do nothing, save restimulate the American oil industry. Should our European allies complain at the high process, then he might invite them to dislodge the Iranians on their own.

In any case, should that sole real military option left to them not work, the Iranians might well then rely upon the one answer militant weakness has to strength: terror. The American government’s reaction to that move would doubtless be a combination of its response to 9/11 on the one hand and Covid on the other—the Patriot Act II, if you will. That, in turn, shall take Americans into a new chapter at home—infinitely preferable to World War III, to be sure, but unpredictable.

Of course, all of this makes one feel rather apocalyptic. But every generation is born, and one way or another, each must die. In addition to the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart, which should raise our eyes to Christ the King, His redemption, and the Heaven we hope to share with all the blessed who have been and are yet to be born, there is another observance: June 10, White Rose Day, the date upon which James II’s son was born in 1688 (the prospect of a Catholic heir sparking the revolution which blighted subsequent English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, Cornish, American, and Commonwealth history). The pope made it the feast of St. Margaret of Scotland in 1693, to honor the birth of the young prince. Ever since, the Jacobites, the supporters of the Catholic Stuarts, have kept that day in memory of the valor of those who fought for their rightful king.

The stories and songs of the Jacobites—including the one with which we opened—are very much in my mind this June, as always. My five-times-great grandfather Laughlin MacKinnon fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 and survived the disaster at Culloden; he emigrated to Canada in 1772, and his daughter married a French-Canadian. If ever there was a noble and Catholic cause well worth dying for, it was that one. Even so, it all went to ruin, and the quoted song reflects well the pain and separation that death—even in an indisputably just cause—entails. 

It was in my head when I looked at my young friend over coffee this morning—and his brother, and all the bright young folk around me. Truly, we owe them better than to waste them in a stupid and useless fray. Our masters must consider carefully how they shall stand before God if ever they do.

But thinking of Bonnie Prince Charlie made me think of another Charles who was deeply concerned with matters of peace and war and who was so dedicated to pursuing the former because he had seen the latter in a way politicians rarely do—and who risked, unsuccessfully, his ancestral throne to end the Great War. I speak here of Bl. Emperor Charles, as valiant in the fray as he was just and kind to the vanquished. My late father often said there is no pacifist like a soldier, and the “Peace Emperor” was a great example of this. 

All of which having been said, I have no idea how things shall turn out, nor do I even claim to know the best course for our government to take at this point. But as my young friend pointed out, prayer is about the best thing we as individuals can do. So, I shall close this article with a prayer for the intercession of Bl. Emperor Charles for peace:

O Lord Jesus Christ, the redemption You won for us gives the world order and peace, which we too often refuse. Mercifully receive our work and prayer as an atonement for all injustices done against Your Most Sacred Heart and against all religious and earthly authority through rebellion and war. May our prayers and sacrifices help bring peace to the world, and atone the multiple injustices, indignities, and slander done against Your servant Karl of Austria, and bring him soon to the honor of public veneration as a saint. Amen.

THIS JUST IN: It looks like this might be Tangier rather than Sarajevo.  Thank God for that – but all the indicated issues we looked at remain, and shall do so long after Trump leaves office.