World War Four? thats the dumbest thing I ever heard

Commentary - July-August 2004:

In an article by Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Norman Podhoretz called "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win", Norman argues that our current "war on Terrorism is like the second world war.

This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

9-11 WAS A CRIME! It was not an act of war. The few thousand members of AlQuida are laughing their asses off ever time they think about what has happened after 9-11. They killed people in a criminal act and they got the USA to over react and invade a country run by a secular dictator that they hated. We played right into the hands of this tiny group of criminal terrorists. Today they are stronger, more famous and credible than ever.

The appropriate response to 9-11 was to work with the worlds various police forces and to bring the criminals to justice. We should have hunted the leaders down and made the world a very unsafe place for these people to operate. Instead, the neocons in the administration used this tragedy as an excuse to invade Iraq.

George Bush started calling himself a "war president" the minute Karl Rove made up the term "War on Terror" on or about September 12th. Look at the gleam in his eye when he says that he is beyond all critisism because he is the War president. Like the war on drugs, its not a real war.

We have only gone to war in the country a few times. The Revolution was not really a war, it was a rebellion. But its more of a war than the War on Terror. The War of 1812 was our first real war. Then you have Mexico, Civil, Spanish and then the 1914 war we call WWI. WWII which began in 1939 was a real war for the united states only after it was declared and voted on in 1941. Hitlers adventures during the Spanish revolution, his invasion of french controled Rhur Valley, the annexing of Austria and Czech Sudatanland were not wars. It wasnt until the German invasion caused the English and French to honor their treaty obligations that WWII became a real war.

The Police action in Korea was never officially a real war. The kids protesting the Vietnam police action were quite daring when they called that conflict a war. The dozens of invasions the USA launched into Central America over the last 100 years are not officially wars.

All this has gotten very muddy under G.W. Bush. What we did in Afganistan was more of a police action than a war. The Iraq Invasion is more troublesome because the president got war powers from congress but kind of forgot to declare war. One of the reasons he did this was to avoid the rules of war. Among many other things, this allowed him to ignore the Geneva conventions which lead to the tortures in Abu Grahab prison and the suspension of legal rights of the people held in Guantanamo Bay.

Wars are fought between states. Its a very formal state of being. When a country goes to war, then all sorts of treaty obligations are invoked. After WWII we set things up (Nato) so that if any of our friends (UK, Germany, and yes, France) were attacked, then we would all attack the agressor. War is serious business. Shame on us for using this term so lightly.

The war on terror... the wars on drugs, Poverty, Polio, Dandruff... These are just semantical tricks. Every year in Dallas they have a war between Texas and Oklahoma at the state Fair. But OU vrs Texas Football game is not really a War... its just called one. There is no war here. Marketing/PR flacks came up with these terms to hijack the gravitas of the real thing.

What is currently happening is not World War 4. Its much harder to say that the situation in Iraq is not a War" today, now that the USA has committed an act of war by invading Iraq and toppling its government. Our president has used the crime of 9-11 as an excuse to invade an unrelated country so that he can establish bases that can project US power into the region. We would be at peace right now if the administration had not invaded Iraq. We would still be in a "war on Terror" but thats just a tern of phrase and nothing real at all.

We are not at war with Islam right now. There is no way we ever will be. Islam is a Religion. And while Bush and Rove may decide some day that it is politically expediant to publically declare that we are at "war with islam", this cannot happen. Wars are between states.

I do not mean to say that our ill advised adventures in Iraq will not lead to WW4 type situation. Especially if GW Bush gets re-elected and the neocons get their wish and we invade Iran. If it then spreads to other places and god forbid eventually into a full blown shooting war with China.... Ok, Norman, you were right, we are in the early days of WW4. But if Kerry gets elected and we pull back from our recent experiment with unilateral exstremist militarism and avoid any more invasions for a few years, Norman is dead wrong. Only time will tell.

But based on this article, I know one thing: Norman Podhoretz is a war monger and a sensationalist.