When you have time today, read this very long and very good commentary by famed editor Tom Engelhardt on Woolsey, Podhoretz & Co. on their contrivance of World War IV.
I particularly like this excerpt:
“World War IV” does many other useful things as well. It moves the goalposts into the future, way off there in an endless generational struggle. In other words, it conveniently excuses much that might otherwise seem baleful or ridiculous in the present.
And of course it disarms critics — for who wants to stand in the path of a necessary global war against your own annihilation? As an image, it (and GWOT) undergird what, in the Cold War, was called the national security state and now has morphed into an even more all-encompassing homeland security state.
The two terms make sense of soaring Pentagon budgets, offshore mini-gulags, and so much else.
It becomes possible to write, as Earl Tilford, former director of research at the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute, did: “This is World War IV. Forget the sleazy sickness of Abu Ghraib. Stop mouthing meaningless slogans like, ‘Bush lied, soldiers died.’ Steel yourselves for a long, bloody fight. This is a war we must not lose.”
— Steve Clemons
