On 7/24/06, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Newt Gingrich: Look what you've been covering: North Korea firing missiles.
We say there'll be consequences, there are none. The North Koreans fire
seven missiles on our Fourth of July; bombs going off in Mumbai, India; a
war in Afghanistan with sanctuaries in Pakistan. As I said a minute ago,
the, the Iran/Syria/Hamas/Hezbollah alliance. A war in Iraq funded largely
from Saudi Arabia and supplied largely from Syria and Iran. The British
home secretary saying that there are 20 terrorist groups with 1200
terrorists in Britain. Seven people in Miami videotaped pledging allegiance
to al-Qaeda, and 18 people in Canada being picked up with twice the
explosives that were used in Oklahoma City, with an explicit threat to bomb
the Canadian parliament, and saying they'd like to behead the Canadian
prime minister. And finally, in New York City, reports that in three
different countries people were plotting to destroy the tunnels of New York.
I mean, we, we are in the early stages of what I would describe as the
third world war....
Tim Russert: This is World War III?
Newt Gingrich: I, 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.
Gingrich brings us back to the American branch of the unilateralist
regression in its worst form. It can't see difference, it can only see
opposition. And, while it is drawn to the principle that the world's
leading nation has a duty to consider everybody's interests, it is
also dangerously attracted to the idea of flattening its enemies in
some apocalyptic showdown. The science fiction addict Gingrich has
read Robert A Heinlein's Starship Troopers one too many times. That
gifted writer, whose early work was pleasingly various and humorous,
went on in that book to invent a future which was basically an
extended metaphor for an American empire under threat. There would be
terrible enemies, who sought nothing less than America's total
destruction, and who must, therefore, themselves be totally destroyed.
This was the mentality against which George Kennan argued at the
beginning of the Cold War. Kennan's main point was that containment
was better than war. But it is equally important to recognise that
different views and plans about the future of the world can't be
blasted out of existence but have to be lived and negotiated with
until, as happens often enough, they change.<
-- Martin Woollacott "The new world immaturity" in the GUARDIAN.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_woollacott/2006/07/post_248.html
one of the neo-cons (Admiral something) already labelled the "war on
terrorism" as being "World War 4," since the name "World War 3" was
already taken, referring to the Cold War.
--
Jim Devine / "You need a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
