WWIII?

All this talk of World World III is wildly exciting and atrociously silly. Newt Gingrich has outdone himself in bombast, calling the current crisis the latest battles of WWIII. The dangers of this nomenclature are obvious. Most after 9/11 believed we faced the possibility of imminent annihilation from some unknown enemy in the East. Thus, swingly around wildly in the dark against anyone who could possibly pose a threat (i.e. Saddam's non-Islamist Iraq) seemed necessary. But we did so at the price of ignoring the complexities of Islamic fundamentalism and regional power politics, the difficulties of state-building, and what should have been our primary task of shutting down Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and finding OBL. Now we have a ghastly civil war (well, almost--this month Baghdad has exploded like never before with sectarian bloodshed) on our hands and have abetted the rise of a far stronger and far more unpredictable and ideologically driven power--Ahmadinajad's Iran. Overexaggeration and bombast have hurt us. The war in Iraq has hurt us. Badly. On the other hand, what does it mean to ignore the threat of fundamentalist terror? What does it mean to downplay the possibility of an 9/11 repeat? The comparisions made to Chamberlain's 1938 appeasement of Hitler are so hackneyed I dare not repeat them here. But it's true--treating bad guys lightly can lead to trouble. No shit. But balance needs to be found between outright war and clammy appeasement. And history is not a perfect teacher. Indeed, Clausewitz reminds us of this: it is impossible to find strategic or tactical principles in history that apply perfectly to the present since all strategic/military situations are different and infinitely complex. Thus, although the bold cries of appeasement are relevant, they may not point towards the same solution that would have been appropriate to the Allies in 1938 Europe--namely, immediate military confrontation with the Third Reich. Gingrich's re-labeling of the conflict, so he purports, forces the world to chose which side it is on: that of American democracy and capitalism or Taliban-style fundamentalism. And, if we are really fighting an apocalyptic struggle between good and evil, then all means (invasion of Iraq, annihiliation of Lebanon, bombing of Iran, etc.) seem necessary. Hasn't the embarrisingly unsuccesful three-year experiment in Iraq shown the bankruptcy of such appeals? Guess not. (Listening to Thom Yorke's new album, however, doesn't help--it's pretty apocalyptic too, although unfortunately not so artistically breathtaking.) Let's face it: the idea of the Apocalypse has probably been the most capitivating idea in the post-Classical West. It's exciting, aesthetically captivating, and gives us a sense of urgency, a sense that we are living in a world-historical epoch. That right now is the time to live and to die. That we are deciding the fate of history and that we want to be the good guys. America needs to get over its post WWII smugness and arrogance. We fought and won a good and important war. It is the very nature of things, however, that every war since will be completely different.