It's not simply nostalgia. And it's not exactly deja vu. But still.
Actually, I guess that it comes closest to "the more things change, the more they stay the same". I mean, I'm reading the news now, and I see the covergence of three story lines that I wrote a sort of fun little piece about before the election in 2008.
As fun, that is, as a subject as serious as World War III is ever likely to get.
It’s far past time for some folks out there on the right wing to get a grip. The ones I mean are those who have lost track of the fact that their favorite talk radio personality really is just an entertainer, and is not actually spewing any sort of gospel. Of course that wannabe political genius hopes that there is no wide spread realization that he is just a yuckmeister with an ego problem, because then the ability to make a living would go way down hill real quick.
Please remember they these radio guys and gals formed a choir to tell us how critical it was for us to mount a full scale invasion of Iraq, and are now telling us how critical it is that we continue to blow a fortune in lives and money there. Fortunately the broader spectrum of our population has stopped accepting this failed logic of the Bushies but one wonders if there is anything strong enough to shake the faith out there on the far right.
With the growing volume of radio talk about the inevitable, and even imminent, commencement of World War III, the attempt to invent crisis where there is none is being bumped up yet another notch. The formula is to select from a grab bag of problems and threats, mix thoroughly, and out pops the conclusion that only conservative Republicans like Rick Santorum can save us from an “islamo fascist” military invasion.
Well, here’s some news for those who may not have been paying attention. Problems have been part of human life from day one and will continue until the end. The same with threats. World Wars, on the other hand are a modern invention, and were made obsolete by the very weapons that we created to fight them. With the advent of atomic weapons, a true world war would clearly end with no winner, and maybe even without any survivors. "World War III" is an invention of a (drug) addled right wing brain and needs to remain only that.
Absent the entire planet ganging up against us, there is no way for our country to be truly challenged militarily. It might be well to remember that Iran and Iraq fought a border war to an eight year stand still, while we took a few days to conquer (more or less) Iraq.
Nor will the world ever rise up against us because, while we seem to be prone to making stupid attempts to throw our military might around, our cooler heads always prevail long before we get too carried away. Realistically, pretty much nobody on the planet believes that they're going to wake up to our military forcing its way down their street. Accordingly, even if the impossibility of all one billion Muslims on earth joining to fight us openly did occur, they would pretty much need to count on also having to fight the five billion other humans who are not them. Even as bad as Bush has trashed our national reputation in the arena of world opinion, if most folks had to choose between fighting with us, or with anyone that attacked us, that would still be a no brainer.
And that’s without even taking into consideration the fundamental difference in circumstances between our current "antagonists" and the folks who cooked up the last world war. Germany, Japan, and Italy were relatively modern societies with relatively complex economies, and principally employed military force to gain oil and other natural resources. Looked at that way, their undertaking was only moderately ambitious and it still failed.
Iran, with or without “the bomb”, still only has oil, and would need to conquer places with everything else in order to use force for its people to continue to live the lifestyle they currently choose. While Iranians clearly have the ability to make a mess out of their own neighborhood, they can’t do even that without enduring far more disruption than they're likely to have any appetite for. True, there are some Muslims who seem inexplicably prone to suicide attacks, but to date they haven’t even been willing to mount the kind of “human wave attacks” that we faced in Korea, let alone some lemming like rush to death. One suspects that the average Muslim, like the rest of us, is far more interested in raising a family and making a living than in dieing in a futile attempt to force the majority to pray the way they do.
The truth is that the Middle East needs the rest of the world far more than the rest of the world needs the Middle East. Sure, they have their hands on the oil faucet, but what are they going to do with the stuff, drink it? Our invasion of Iraq proves that invasion of an oil exporting country cuts production, rather than ensuring it, and there’s no sign anywhere that that’s a mistake that we're likely to willingly repeat.
We may not be able to stop buying oil, but Iran can’t stop selling it either. Therein lies the sort of stalemate that seems like it might be fertile ground for some constructive communication, but that seems to be the sort of approach that the Bush Administration is adamantly opposed to.