World War III — “The Long War”

{Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V}

Has the Third World War begun? That depends on your point of view. If you have not succumbed to the fear being perpetrated by various global leaders concerning the threat of terrorism or the “Islamo-fascists,” then no, we are not in World War III. At most, we are in the middle of a failed occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that quickly need to end before they spiral out of control.

But if you are afraid, or you are one of the fearmongerors who understands that a neverending war against an ambiguous enemy is the quickest path to unfettered power, then for you, the United States is now caught up in the midst of the third iteration of global war — this one lasting for decades.Ultimately, it will be historians who decide when and if this period after the 9/11 attacks through the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq marked the beginnings of World War III. But there are many powerful people in the world today who want World War III to begin so that they might have an excuse for continued aggression against other countries. To date, they have been cautious of using the words “World War III”; instead, they have chosen the much more Orwellian description of “The Long War.”

The Long War as a description of the war on terror was first used by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in February of 2006. In a speech entitled “The Long War,” Rumsfeld proclaimed that the United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, a struggle that could potentially last for decades. Rumsfeld likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin, and stressed that Americans could not give up in the battle of wills, a battle that could stretch for years. “Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs,” he said.

Rumsfeld’s vision of a war spanning years and years came on the eve of the 2006 Defense Quadrennial Defense Review Report. Every four years, the Secretary of Defense is required to release a report detailing the threats the United States will face in the next 20 years. The 2006 Report echoed Rumsfeld call for a generation of warfare; its opening lines are simple yet profound in their consequences: “The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war.” And throughout the document, there is a repeated emphasis that the war on terror is a “long war” that will last for decades.

Rumsfeld is not alone in sketching out this vision of decades of perpetual war. As early as 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney promised that the war on terror would require “decades of patient effort“. In July of 2006, in the midst of Israel’s incursion into Lebanon, potential presidential contender Newt Gingrich declared that the United States was in the midst of World War III and had to act accordingly. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert, Gingrich said, “I mean, this is absolutely a question of the survival of Israel, but it’s also a question of what is really a world war…. We are in the early stages of what I would describe as the third world war, and frankly, our bureaucracies aren’t responding fast enough. We don’t have the right attitude about this.” Russert asked, “This is World War III?” to which Gingrich responded, “I believe if you take all the countries I just listed, that you’ve been covering, put them on a map, look at all the different connectivity, you’d have to say to yourself this is, in fact, World War III.”

On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this triumphalist call for a recogniation of a generational conflict reached an almost fever pitch. President George W. Bush took advantage of a televised address to declare that the war on terror was a “struggle for civilization” and that defeat would leave the world vulnerable to nuclear-armed terrorist states. “This struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilization” Bush said. “We are fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations. And we are fighting for the possibility that good and decent people across the Middle East can raise up societies based on freedom and tolerance and personal dignity.”

A few days later, the infamous former American Secretarty of State Henry Kissinger echoed Bush’s remarks in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, advising Europe and the United States that they had to form a unified front in a “war of civilizations” arising from a nuclear-armed Middle East. “The debate sparked by the Iraq war over American rashness vs. European escapism is dwarfed by what the world now faces,” he wrote. “Both sides of the Atlantic should put their best minds together on how to deal with the common danger of a wider war merging into a war of civilizations against the background of a nuclear-armed Middle East.”

The fact is that the most powerful people in the world are viewing global events within a paradigm of global war. For them, there is no question that war must continue for years or even decades to come. Victory, if it ever comes, will be a hard slog which will require sacrifice from the nation.

It is difficult to take these words seriously because they are coming from the mouths of people who have little to no veracity in their capacities as government officials. But their actions — the invasions of multiple countries, the use of secret prisons where inmates are tortured, the construction of military bases outside the purview of the legal system, and the slow but steady erasure of Constitutional rights in the United States — speak much louder than words. We have no choice but to take their proclamations of war with a great deal of seriousness, because it is clear that the fervor for blood and conquest is now guiding much of American foreign policy.

Through these war-tinted glasses, American leaders rarely see friends, only enemies. This reliance on military might is now coloring the quality of the negotiations taking place between the United States and Iran. The outcome of these negotiations, and the potential spread of “The Long War” into Iran, will be the subject of Part II of this series: “The Coming Conflict with Iran”.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 am and is filed under Structure and System, World War III. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.