It's WWIII, and U.S.,is out of ideas

Sunday, July 9th, 2006

Last week's headlines prove the point: North Korea fires missiles, Iran
talks of nukes again, Iraq carnage continues, Israel invades Gaza,
England observes one-year anniversary of subway bombing. And, oh, yes,
the feds stop a plot to blow up tunnels under the Hudson River.
World War III has begun.
It's not perfectly clear when it started. Perhaps it was after the
Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended. Perhaps it was the first
bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993.
What is clear is that this war has a long fuse and, while we are not in
the full-scale combat phase that marked World Wars I and II, we seem to
be heading there. The expanding hostilities mean it's time to give this
conflict a name, one that focuses the mind and clarifies the big
picture.
The war on terror, or the war of terror, has tentacles that reach much
of the globe. It is a world war.
While it is often a war of loose or no affiliation, and sometimes just
amateur copycats, the similar goals of destruction add up to a threat
against modern society. Even the hapless wanna-bes busted in Miami
ordered guns and military equipment from a man they thought was from Al
Qaeda. Islamic fascists are the driving force, but anti-American hatred
is a global membership card for any and all who have a grievance and a
gun.
The feeling that the wheels are coming off the world has only one
recent comparison, the time when America's head-butt with communism
sprouted hot spots from Cuba to Vietnam. Yet ultimately the policy of
mutual assured destruction worked because American and Soviet leaders
didn't want their countries hit by nuclear bombs.
Such rational thinking is quaint next to the ravings of North Korean
nut Kim Jong Il and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They both
seem to be dying to die – and set the world on fire.
And don't forget Osama Bin Laden's declaration that it is the duty of
every Muslim to acquire a “Muslim bomb.” Is there any doubt he would
use it if he had it?
I sound pessimistic because I am. Even worse than the problems is the
fact that our political system is failing us. Democratic Party leaders
want to pretend we can declare peace and everything will be fine, while
President Bush is out of ideas. Witness Bush now counseling patience
and diplomacy on North Korea. This from a man who scorned both for five
years.
But what choice does he have now that the pillars of his post-9/11
foreign policy are crumbling? As Harvard Prof. Joseph Nye argues in
Foreign Affairs magazine, Bush's strategy of “reducing Washington's
reliance on permanent alliances and international institutions,
expanding the traditional right of preemption into a new doctrine of
preventive war and advocating coercive democratization as a solution to
Middle Eastern terrorism” amounted to a bid for a “legacy of
transformation.”
The first two ideas have been repealed. The third brought Hamas into
power and has so far failed to take root in Iraq or anywhere else.
I believed Iraq was the key, that if we prevailed there, momentum would
shift in our favor. Now I'm not sure. We still must prevail there, but
Iraq could mean nothing if Iran or Bin Laden get the bomb or North
Korea uses one.
Meanwhile, I'm definitely not using any tunnels.
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