You think you have problems?!
Welcome to World War III ! According to Newt Gingrich, we are already there! What with events, from Iraq to N. Korea to Iran to the Israel-Lebanon/Hezbollah conflict and even to our Mumbai trains’ bomb blasts, he thinks this is a World War against Islam. So let’s see – the main enemy flank of this “World War” is a bunch of smelly Pathans, in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, using ancient to semi-modern weaponry, with a twisted medieval ideology and with their preferred choice of attack being to blow themselves up! Talk about self-defeating war strategies!
Not to say that fundamentalist Islam is not a real threat…it certainly is and has to be stamped out with all force at one’s disposal. But to call it a WW??! Lets see – Hitler had an entire war machine for which dangerous-sounding words were specifically assigned like Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe whereas Osama has Al-Jazeera and lieutenants who can’t even fire a machine gun! The Ottoman Empire (a WW I enemy of the “good guys”), at its peak, was knocking at the doors of Western Europe and if it had succeeded, the world as we know it would be completely different. On the other hand, Al-Qaeda is busy trying to grow more hashish (or poppy, if we’re being technical here!) in an attempt to bring back the Swingin’ Sixties (or finance itself, but in keeping with the non-technical nature of this…) and are busy preventing young girls from going to school, the bloody cowards, with their version of the “No Child Left Behind (Just kiddin”!) Act”!
I think Gingrich personifies what all Cold War warriors loved most about the 50s, 60s, 70s and the 80s…the overwhelming fear of world destruction by crazy dictators or totalitarian regimes using weapons of mass destruction. Heck, what’s there not to love?! Just a little problem, though, in the thinking – Osama can’t quite hold on to even Kabul (admittedly with US and NATO help), how’s he going to: 1) Get his hands on, say, a nuke; 2) Have the capacity to deliver it without it getting intercepted and/or stopped in some other way and 3) Ensure that whoever he hits with that nuke won’t retaliate back to make north-western Pakistan and almost all of Afghanistan a moonscape for the next thousand years, while they’re still hiding there?! The insurgents in Iraq are busy in their own little historic grievances – the Sunni hate the Shia, the Shia hate the Kurds, the Kurds hate the Turks and the Turks hate falafel that’s not cooked to a golden brown color! How, in the ever lovin’ world, does this bunch, which I assume Gingrich would think is the common enemy, the Muslims, ever going to confront the West as an united enemy?!
I don’t tar the entire Muslim world with the same brush, not at all. But when politicians use terms like “World War III” it does signify fighting against a unified, fearsome and organized enemy who, as a whole, has a rational chance of success against us, the good guys! Maybe, as a solution, here’s what can be done: Ask Gingrich to smoke some of the finest agricultural produce from Afghanistan and take it easy, contract out to Osama, and his ilk, the Afghan version of the immensely successful “Girls Gone Wild” so that he would let women go back to colleges over there and make himself an honest buck (nothing like capitalism and the profit motive to distract from jihadi thoughts and insane rantings on various recording media) and as for the Iraqi situation…well, open Pottery Barn stores across the country and show people, literally, what it means to be at the receiving end of the Rule that all the civilized, mall-loving, non-china-breaking world lives by!
Not to say that fundamentalist Islam is not a real threat…it certainly is and has to be stamped out with all force at one’s disposal. But to call it a WW??! Lets see – Hitler had an entire war machine for which dangerous-sounding words were specifically assigned like Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe whereas Osama has Al-Jazeera and lieutenants who can’t even fire a machine gun! The Ottoman Empire (a WW I enemy of the “good guys”), at its peak, was knocking at the doors of Western Europe and if it had succeeded, the world as we know it would be completely different. On the other hand, Al-Qaeda is busy trying to grow more hashish (or poppy, if we’re being technical here!) in an attempt to bring back the Swingin’ Sixties (or finance itself, but in keeping with the non-technical nature of this…) and are busy preventing young girls from going to school, the bloody cowards, with their version of the “No Child Left Behind (Just kiddin”!) Act”!
I think Gingrich personifies what all Cold War warriors loved most about the 50s, 60s, 70s and the 80s…the overwhelming fear of world destruction by crazy dictators or totalitarian regimes using weapons of mass destruction. Heck, what’s there not to love?! Just a little problem, though, in the thinking – Osama can’t quite hold on to even Kabul (admittedly with US and NATO help), how’s he going to: 1) Get his hands on, say, a nuke; 2) Have the capacity to deliver it without it getting intercepted and/or stopped in some other way and 3) Ensure that whoever he hits with that nuke won’t retaliate back to make north-western Pakistan and almost all of Afghanistan a moonscape for the next thousand years, while they’re still hiding there?! The insurgents in Iraq are busy in their own little historic grievances – the Sunni hate the Shia, the Shia hate the Kurds, the Kurds hate the Turks and the Turks hate falafel that’s not cooked to a golden brown color! How, in the ever lovin’ world, does this bunch, which I assume Gingrich would think is the common enemy, the Muslims, ever going to confront the West as an united enemy?!
I don’t tar the entire Muslim world with the same brush, not at all. But when politicians use terms like “World War III” it does signify fighting against a unified, fearsome and organized enemy who, as a whole, has a rational chance of success against us, the good guys! Maybe, as a solution, here’s what can be done: Ask Gingrich to smoke some of the finest agricultural produce from Afghanistan and take it easy, contract out to Osama, and his ilk, the Afghan version of the immensely successful “Girls Gone Wild” so that he would let women go back to colleges over there and make himself an honest buck (nothing like capitalism and the profit motive to distract from jihadi thoughts and insane rantings on various recording media) and as for the Iraqi situation…well, open Pottery Barn stores across the country and show people, literally, what it means to be at the receiving end of the Rule that all the civilized, mall-loving, non-china-breaking world lives by!
posted by Purush at 10:51 PM
2 Comments:
Getting better and better man... was totally bowled by "the Sunni hate the Shia, the Shia hate the Kurds, the Kurds hate the Turks and the Turks hate falafel that’s not cooked to a golden brown color!" Brilliant and looking fwd to more stuff !
Thanks buddy. I'm a little surprised, though, that this WW III position by Gingrich hasn't got wider press coverage in the media here...He's a major politico-thinker on the right (though this analysis might well make him out as one of 'em extreme right-wing whackos), and he could very well play an important role in strategy in the near future for the GOP.
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