WW III?

“Total War” is roughly defined as “a conflict of unlimited scope in which a belligerent engages in the total mobilization of all resources available to him, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise, in order to entirely destroy or render beyond use their rival's capacity to continue to resist. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and non-combatants than in previous conflicts, as nearly every person from a particular country, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of their belligerent's war effort.” While the concept of total war has been around for a very long time, its first widespread appearance followed the French Revolution, where the French “levée en masse” was mobilized to combat the anti-revolutionary European alliance. I will add that in a total war, it is not necessarily a case of “less differentiation between combatants and non-combatants” as it is more properly a case of “no differentiation”.

WW II was a total war by any definition, and we can readily see that all the combatant nations happily bombed their opponents cities in an attempt to kill off skilled civilian workers as well as break civilian moral. Japan indiscriminately bombed Chinese cities; the Luftwaffe indiscriminately bombed English cities, with the Royal Air Force happily returning the favor. The USAAF primarily tried to bomb industrial targets in Germany, while indiscriminately burning out the very large residential areas of numerous Japanese cities. We all know of the nuclear attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed.

Until late in the cold war, both Soviet and American nuclear weapons were targeted at cities for the most part, in order to accomplish the greatest possible damage to their opponents infrastructure. (Cities were about the smallest target that could be accurately hit, with accuracy being defined as anywhere within a few miles of the aim point.)

All this brings us to World War Three, a conflict that most Americans deny has happened… yet. Still, many of us maintain that WW III began in November 1979, without the expected nuclear exchange between superpowers. You don't have to be an employee of the CIA or NSC to understand that American citizens and interests have been under organized attack since 1979, when Islamic fundamentalists engineered the take-over of the American embassy in Tehran. Led by an inept administration, America could not respond effectively or decisively, and the terrorists became braver with each day. When the President finally decided that “enough is enough”, and did do something about this little understood war, the democratic left began weeping, wailing, wringing their hands, and proclaiming “it’s all our fault!”, while demanding that we immediately surrender and bring the troops home, effectively they’re hiding their heads in the sand. You can listen to John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid if you like… and your conclusions will be completely wrong, because we’re facing the greatest threat to our existence in our nation’s history! The current idea of total war is simply break one’s enemies will to resist, a point the terrorists obviously understand, and their efforts appear to be working, on our congress at least!

And it is a war to the death as well, misunderstood by most Americans because we are not fighting a particular nation or even a coalition of nations. It’s a war of ideologies, no less so than the cold war, pitting autocratic Islam against the distinctly western concept of freedom and democracy. The religious part of this war has been going on for centuries as Islam periodically tried to encroach upon Europe. They have been defeated in the past to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover, but they have never been totally defeated, and if they are left alone they will recover and try again. Yet they may not need to try again… as they presently have the “ultimate” weapon to defeat the west readily at hand, in the form of oil. Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will do if we simply pull out of the mid-east? It’s not the price of oil we will have to worry about, as oil simply will not be available to us! And yes, it certainly is a war about oil as we’re so often told by the protesters, considering that our economy will curl up and die if that mid-east oil supply is cut off right now. Forget about a recession, we’ll have a depression that will make 1929 look like child’s play!

The present cost of imported oil has done considerable harm to our economy, and which, along with our fast approaching presidential election, has diverted our attention from the real threat of the mid-east. The temporary quiet in Iraq, and lack of recent attacks against America proper have lulled far to many Americans into a false sense of security. This war is far from over…

No matter how much energy any nation conserves, and no matter how quickly anyone develops alternative energy sources, oil and natural gas will power the world economy for the next fifty years and probably more. The Middle East's oil reserves mean that a stable Muslim world is the key to world stability. However, economic development or the lack of it have a large bearing on the Muslim world, with the Muslims seemingly unable to improve the standard of living for the majority of their populations even with the enormous wealth of petrodollars available to them. The booming Muslim population means that there is a vast increase in the "troublesome cohort of male youngsters in ages from 15 to 29", that are chronically unemployed and poverty stricken. Unemployed young men are easily recruited to become “soldiers of jihad” by autocrats and theocrats that use "historical grievances" to blame for their economic condition.

We proclaim that we are engaged in a “War on Terror”, yet all we see is a “comparatively” small scale ground war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But radical Islam, directed by fanatics, supported by fundamentalist governments, and financed by oil revenue, is engaged in a total war with America, one in which they continue to mobilized every asset available to them… and America continually panders to “world opinion”! Without a strong US presence in the Mid-east, which effectively forces a stalemate upon our enemies, Iran can readily dominate the entire region since Iraq is no longer a military threat to them. They have turned their attention to the only western country that can block their economic world dominance, and they are convinced that they will eventually win, because the US is so divided. If we allow those Islamic madmen to gain a nuclear capability then we had better hunker down, because we’ll have lost, big time.

This religious/economic war will continue until the American people elect some tough “no nonsense” wartime leaders that recognize the situation for what it is, and who will act effectively and decisively to carry this war to an unquestionably victorious end. If that means we must repudiate the pious pleadings of our “weeping willies”, then so be it. If it means that we must engage in large scale military actions around the world, then so be it. Certainly we shouldn’t force “our” way of life on “them”, but we must demonstrate beyond any possible misunderstanding that we are not going to allow “them” to force their way of life on us, and neither are we going to back down in the face of their threats! The message we must forcibly impress on the Islamic leadership is that if they really believe in the “rightness” of terror, then they certainly can’t complain if the US Armed Forces come down on them like the proverbial “ton of bricks”, and show them just what terror is all about!

And if the Iranians don’t like America’s new attitude… well, I’ll see ‘yer shiny new rockets… and raise you a carrier battle group.