George Ochenski: 'Battlefield Earth'

World War III? No thanks, Newt!

George Ochenski, Missoula Independent

Last Friday Newt Gingrich, one of the founding fathers of the so-called
Republican Revolution of the '90s, made the shocking announcement that
America is already "in World War III." The idea that we are currently in a
world war--or that we would enter such a war under the secretive and
feckless leadership of the current White House and Congress in an election
year--ought to give us all the big-time heebie-jeebies.

Perhaps someone recalls Congress voting to declare war recently. If so, it
must have been done in the smoke-filled backrooms where they put together
their energy policy, because it has yet to be made public. To be sure, the
frightened and vengeful members of the post-9/11 Congress passed resolutions
that President Bush leveraged into his ongoing invasion and occupation of
Iraq and Afghanistan. But despite the constitutional provision in Article I
that "Congress shall have the power to declare war," no formal Declaration
of War was ever issued. Instead, what we had in Korea, Vietnam, the
invasions of Panama and Grenada, the Persian Gulf (Desert Storm) and now
Iraq and Afghanistan are "conflicts" being waged under a Congressional
"authorization of force."

Considerations of how war is (and is not) declared aside, Gingrich has no
problem whatsoever with starting a third world war. In a published interview
with Seattle Times reporter David Postman last week, Gingrich said President
Bush should call a joint session of Congress in the first week of September
and declare World War III underway. According to the article, Newt sees the
ongoing "wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, last week's bomb attacks in India,
Korean nuclear threats, terrorist arrests and investigations in Florida,
Canada and Britain, and violence in Israel and Lebanon as evidence of World
War III." What Bush needs to do, Gingrich says, is "connect all the dots"
for Americans in a speech before Congress.

Pointing to Israel's recent air and ground attacks in Lebanon, Gingrich says
once Americans accept that "this is World War III," criticism and calls for
restraint would end. In his exact and chilling words: "Israel wouldn't leave
Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean
them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring
missiles to re-supply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this
one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to
talk, is nuts."

Somehow, Gingrich has lost count of who is doing most of the killing here,
who is being killed and who is nuts. Not just in Lebanon but in Afghanistan
and Iraq as well, the number of civilians being killed in these undeclared
wars is appalling. In Iraq alone, Reuters reports that known civilian deaths
are estimated at between 39,123 and 43,575, with the British medical journal
Lancet claiming the death count could actually be as high as 100,000. The
Associated Press reported this week that 527 civilians have been killed in
Iraq in the first 17 days of July, bringing the toll to 1,585 Iraqi citizens
killed since the "unity" government took over two months ago.

In Afghanistan, an estimated 3,000-4,000 noncombatant deaths occurred during
the initial air strikes--to which you can add the growing number of civilian
deaths since then, including an estimated 600 this year alone.

British newspaper The Guardian published an article from an on-site reporter
in the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon this week that quotes Ahmed Mrouwe,
the director of the local hospital, as saying: "We have received 196 wounded
and 25 dead; the majority of them are children and women." Shockingly, he
estimates this is one out of every three people in the area's population.

To be sure, not all the civilian deaths in these conflicts are being caused
by the United States or Israeli militaries. But equally sure, there's simply
no denying the many published reports in which noncombatant deaths have been
directly caused by military action. For Gingrich to posit that "the other
team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk" is not only wildly
inaccurate, it is, in his own words, "nuts."

Which brings us to question the real motivation behind Gingrich's plan to
push Bush and his corrupt and failing Republican congressional majorities
into World War III. Again, in Gingrich's own words from the Seattle Times
article, he believes Republicans are "sailing into the wind" in the upcoming
election--in large part because the Iraq situation is spiraling into all-out
civil war. But public opinion can "change the minute you use the language"
of World War III, says Gingrich, because then the message becomes: "OK, if
we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"

The idea of Bush and Congress using wars for political advantage is nothing
new. Didn't we already hear Bush try to sell us this same snake oil with the
threat of nonexistent WMDS? Didn't Bush's "message" (and our "mission") then
change to "bringing democracy to Iraq"? Weren't we told by Vice President
Dick Cheney that the "Iraq insurgency was on its last legs"? Didn't this
same cabal promise that the outrageous costs of these foolish adventures
"would be paid for by oil revenues"? The lies just keep on coming, our world
standing keeps on dropping, the deficit keeps on skyrocketing and the Middle
East, far from heading toward a stable Democratic future, is increasingly
going up in literal flames.

Gingrich says he plans to take his politically motivated plan to start WWIII
to the White House in the coming months, where he may well find acceptance
from his fellow Republicans--who are, after all, staring their own political
mortality in the face. But given the dismal track record of Bush's wars so
far, I'm betting the general populace is going to be smart enough to tell
these Republican warmongers "No Thanks!"--and then vote 'em out of office.

When not lobbying the Montana Legislature, George Ochenski is rattling the
cage of the political establishment as a political analyst for the
Independent.

Source: Missoula Independent
http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=5851

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson