World War III, Redux

Are you ready for World War III?

Last week, President Bush threatened as much, should Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad develop a nuclear weapon. (Yet, few have remembered to mention that this isn't his first such quip.) Add that to the Senate’s recently approved resolution urging Bush to label a faction of Iran’s standing army as a foreign terrorist organization and you’ve got some serious ramped-up talk. But is it in perspective?

World War I, deemed the “war to end all wars,” killed 10 million people, wounded 20 million more and left wounds deep enough to bring about World War II. Challenging comprehension, WWII killed 70 million and was the most deadly era in human existence. It reduced Europe to rubble and gave
birth to the atomic bomb. The current situation, however, rings more confounding because, other than Bush, there seem to be few willing combatants for WWIII.

As the president issued warnings from a podium last week, Ahmadinejad smiled, hip to hip with Russian
President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader — who has lately developed several autocratic tendencies — declared his country’s vehement opposition to any action against Iran. Is Bush going to pick a fight with Putin, the man he still calls a friend?

And then there’s China. At first glance, China may seem to have little to do with American action in the
Middle East, but the emerging superpower’s current concerns offer a foreboding echo to Bush’s latest threat by saber-rattling over Taiwan and the Dalai Lama’s visit to Washington. China’s Communist Party congress, which meets twice a decade, assembled in Beijing last week. Their chief challenge? Managing the country’s frenetic economic growth. As China continues to loan billions to the U.S. to fund the ongoing war in Iraq, the agenda in Beijing was very telling. While China has to address growing income inequality and potential environmental disaster, World War is nowhere to be found.

So, what do you think about waging World War III? Before you decide, there’s one more puzzling development. Last Tuesday, Iraq also announced $1.1 billion in contracts for desperately needed power plants. Who is going to build them? Iran and China.

Perhaps, as the White House later suggested, Bush’s World War III remark was just “a rhetorical point.” In such tense and uncertain times, there’s a danger in rhetorical flourishes meant for effect. With the stock market in flux and other economic indicators painting a cautious picture for next year, the president should focus on reality rather than conjuring up new wars.

(Also published in Metro.)

Comments

[Sage]

The burden of Governance is a tagalong called the chattering class where a certain smugness lies. Fueled by a default state of frenzy, whereby so many occupy themselves with delusions of hobnobbing greatness.

Consumed with high drama over syntax, debating amongst themselves the complexities of conjugation - the words, WW3 and WW4.

It would never occur to frightened mice that Iran would already have a name for Their 30 Year War. But then, that's not the way the game is played, is it???

[Sage]

According to the 2007 State Department Report, 14,352 terrorist operations took place across the world in 2006, and as a result 74,545 military persons and 20,570 civilians were killed; 1,800 children were wounded and killed, 430 students, 215 teachers and 129 reporters lost their lives; 8,200 policemen were wounded and killed, in addition to 1,300 public leaders and guards. The number of individuals abducted during 2,006 is estimated to be around 15,855; and the number of buildings, schools and governmental institutions targeted amounted to 19,500; 300 terrorist groups took responsibility for these operations, in addition to the individual incidents of terrorism.

And so Andrew, I ask. When Iran gets the bomb do you suppose they will declare victory and lay down their arm, go off and become computer repairman and sell insurance?

No. Pygmy's will bang on his knees and chant "Bush failed". And, over coffee you will be so proud of your demonstrations while considering a "bomb awareness march".

[Hal]

The lefties are spent and defeated all because of Iraq. The Surge, regardless of Reid's chant, is working, and timetables on bugging out are off the table.

So the newest game becomes Iran, and "the here we go again" attitude on display strikes me as disingenuous or at least ill-conceived.

That my friends, is the way the game is played. And when you are the party of no ideas, you play lots of games.

[marcus]

As socialists parse it, you'd conclude that the title of the next Iranian act of war is of no matter, but what we call it does. So be very afraid.....of semantics.

Like Neville Chamberlain, who wasn't going to let minor matters such as Czechoslovakia's survival get in the way of Peace in Our Time, guys like Andrew Bast act as if we shouldn't bother with Iran unless the mullahs attack us directly.

Socialists don't even think that an Iranian bomb would, by itself, be a mortal threat to Israel. But the "realists" don't much care about such details, since the question of Israel's survival is a matter of indifference to them.

Just another game for the Shallow Thinkers.

[biddet]

I can only describe Bast's fixation with the often used term WWIII as emotional incontinence.

[Endorph]

WASHINGTON — As the West steps up its economic pressure on Iran, the United Nations' atomic watchdog is saying there is no evidence Iran's enrichment of uranium is intended for a nuclear weapons program.

.....well, i guess that should settle that. The most competent, honorable, and unbiased source on the globe is telling Bast that this subject is over. In the interest of World Peace Andy, let us move on.

[Gloria]

Andy, it is rhetoric like yours that feeds the fire of the Bush Administration. Both the UN and CNN agree that we need to speak softer because your hateful talk undermines the system and leads to misunderstandings.

[wolfb]

France strongly rejects El Baradei’s claims on CNN about Iran. Agence France Presse’s Abu Dhabi bureau reports this morning:

French Defence Minister Herve Morin on Monday dismissed comments by the head of the UN atomic watchdog that there was no evidence Iran is building nuclear weapons, saying Paris has evidence to the contrary.

“Our information, matching those of other countries, gives us the opposite feeling,” Morin told a news conference in Abu Dhabi at the end of a short visit to the United Arab Emirates.

Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN atomic watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding “fuel to the fire” with their bellicose rhetoric.

El Baradei made the remarks to Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “Late Edition” yesterday. Blitzer took what El Baradei said at face value and failed to challenge him.

Separately this morning, an Israeli government minister blasted El Baradei for his CNN interview. “Mohamed El Baradei is, simply, instead of fighting against Iran’s nuclear program, looking for all the reasons to whitewash and justify it,” Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel radio.

Lieberman said El Baradei had now started covering up for the Iranian regime “for ideological reasons, for a commitment to the Islamic world.”

“Why does Iran need ballistic missiles?” Lieberman asked. “The proof El Baradei is looking for is probably that nuclear mushroom everyone will be able to see in the sky. Before that, no proof would satisfy him.”

He went on to accuse the IAEA chief of obstructing US-led efforts to pass a new round of sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. There is no doubt that the role El Baradei and the IAEA are playing today is a very, very negative role in the process that is currently under way in the Security Council,” Lieberman said.

[david hill]

The article is fine in its assessment but where due to growing factors, a global war in some highly powerful minds, may make perfect sense. I say this as the greatest threat to humanity is the population explosion and where a major global war would solve this problem. Indeed, there is a minority of humans with considerable wealth and power who see the destruction of others as the savoir of themselves (and their vast wealth it has to be said also). The late Glenn Seaborg(Element 106 Seaborgium) our founding President personally appealed and implored President Truman not to drop the 'bomb' on occupied Japanese territory. The President though through his military advisers took no notice even though he discovered Plutonium and was head of the Plutonium plant on the Manhattan Project. But behind the scenes also at the time, there were dark figures who saw that after the fall of Japan, great wealth could also be secured. These figures manipulate presidents and leaders to their own ends and basically again today, change-master politicians and governments in particular, are in the pocket of very rich and very powerful individuals/multinational companies, who seemingly do not look for peace but in many ways for wars and their own vested economic interests. Thinking that they can survive because they are on the strongest side and the reason why in many ways US$1.2 trillion per annum and growing, is spent on armaments now.
But getting back to humankind's greatest threat (even greater than that of even the warmongers it has to be said) is that of the ever-growing population problem and where I give a little evidence based facts that people may not be aware of.
The population of the world (in absolute numbers) has only to increase year-on-year by a mere 0.85% for there to be 12 billion people by 2075. The current population growth (in absolute numbers) is 1.27% (most recent UN figures), some 26% above the percentage increase for 12 billion humans to exist in 2075. But looking at the present rate of human growth, there would be 15.6 billion human inhabitants living on planet Earth in 67-years time. But again, as growth rates are, in statistical terms (not the best accurate measure by any means), slightly declining year-on-year, let us assume that the growth rate is the average of the two, which is 1.18%, then we would still have 14.7 billion people to support. In every scenario it is something that the world's resources could not possibly support considering rising standards of living throughout the world and where it is predicted that India alone will have over half-billion middle class citizens by 2025 (McKinsey, May 2007) on its present economic path. And a final point, what is happening with statistics is that they are being manipulated as usual. In this respect people say that population is declining statistically, but where in reality as we have a greater number each year for our base-line, the figures are really growing at the same rate as the year before, or close to that. It is a bit of a con job that governments in particular like to use so not to alarm their electorate.
Therefore overall looking at our bleak future in a world with vastly dwindling resources by the decade, a war may very well be on the cards for humankind in this century, and one where this time there will be no winners.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland
www.thewif.org.uk