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.)
There’s a haunting television commercial in rotation these days.
Thousands of nondescript people are bustling across a heavenly green
meadow toward a gaping, bottomless hole where, like lemmings, they
plunge into nonexistence. With their arms at their sides and their
complicit legs still pumping, mass mentality, according to the ad,
deprives them of a sizzling hamburger. It’s supposed to be funny.
In the sordid history of 21st century Iraq, August 19, 2003 sticks out as a chilling turning point. The US had invaded five months earlier and since holed up their governing operation inside a secluded Green Zone on a bend in the Tigris river. Looting, unrest, and a general sense of chaos had overtaken the city, despite the rosy assurances US officials.
Once you get beyond the apparent irrationality of the phrase, "laws of war," and look closely at the terms, juridical dilemmas abound. Despite the fact that George II's "War on Terror" is now half a decade old, debate over the most fundamental aspects of how that war is waged is still very much ongoing.





