"I was a lover, before this war." Those are the fast words sung on TV on the Radio’s "Return to Cookie Mountain," one of the most widely praised albums of 2006. Whatever the line means within the band’s cryptic lyrics, it could also apply to the past year’s popular music. Thoughts of romance, vice and comfort still dominated the charts and the airwaves. But amid the entertainment, songwriters— including some aiming for the Top 10—were also grappling with a war that wouldn’t go away.Pop’s political consciousness rises in every election year, and much as it became clear in November that voters are tired of war, music in 2006 also reflected battle fatigue. Beyond typical wartime attitudes of belligerence, protest and yearning for peace, in 2006 pop moved toward something different: a mood somewhere between resignation and a siege mentality.Songs that touched on the war in 2006 were suffused with the mournful and resentful knowledge that—s Nell Young titled the album he made and rush-released in the spring—we are "Living With War," and will be for some time. Awareness of the war throbs like a chronic headache behind more pleasant distractions.The cultural response to war in Iraq and the war on terrorism—one protracted, the other possibly endless—doesn’t have an exact historical parallel. Unlike World War Ⅱ, the current situation has brought little national unity; unlike the Vietnam era, ours has no appreciable domestic support for America’s opponents. Iraq may be mining into a quagmire and civil war like Vietnam, but the current war has not inspired talk of generation wide rebellion (,perhaps because there’s no draft m pit young against old) or any colorful, psychedelically defiant counterculture. The war songs of the 21st century have been sober and earnest, pragmatic rather than fanciful.Immediate responses to 9/11 and to the invasion of Iraq arrived along familiar lines. There was anger and saber-rattling at first, particularly in country music: the Dixie Chicks’ career was upended in 2003 when Natalie Maines disparaged the president on the eve of the Iraq invasion. There were folky protest songs about weapons and oil profiteering, like "The Price of Oil" by Billy Bragg; in a 21st-century touch, there were denunciations of news media complicity from songwriters as varied as Merle Haggard, Nellie McKay and the punk-rock band Anti-Flag.Rappers, who were already slinging war metaphors for everything from rhyme battles to tales of drag-dealing crime soldiers, soon exploited the multitude of rhymes for Iraq. while some. like Eminem and OutKast, also bluntly attacked the president and the war.In 2006 songwriters who Usually stick to love songs found themselves paying attention to the war as well. "A new year, a new enemy/another soldier gone to war," John Legend sings in "Coming Home," the song that ends his 2006 album, "Once Again." it’s a soldier’s letter home, wondering if his gtrlfriend still cares. "It seems the wars will never end. but we’ll make it home again," Mr. Legend croons, more wishful than confident. The word "protracted" (Line 1, Para. 4)means（）

A. ended
B. prolonged
C. protruded
D. terminated