August 12, 2006–In a recent round of TV interviews, Newt Gingrich, former Republican House Speaker and potential 2008 presidential candidate, made the startling case that World War III has already begun.

In a recent FoxNews interview, Gingrich, who is a strident mouthpiece for the Rumsfeld-Cheney hawks, declared, “When you have bombings in India, you have war going on in Afghanistan, you have war going on in Iraq, you have a war going on in Gaza and South Lebanon, you have Syria and Libya and North Korea actively plotting to defeat the democracies, you have Ahmadinejad, the leader of Iran, saying publicly he wants to defeat the Americans and eliminate Israel from the face of the earth, you have people plotting to blow up New York tunnels, you have Canadians plotting to blow up the Canadian parliament and behead the prime minister . . . My point is we're in a war!”

For Gingrich and his PNAC buddies, the Middle East is very much the nuclear crucible of this World War, and there is no meaningful distinction to be drawn between Zionist and American interests. Equally disturbingly, he equivocally lumps the Sunni Saudis in with the Shiite crescent, in spite of the fact that these two factions tend to despise each other almost as much as they resent the Israeli occupation: “There is an Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance, and it is both waging war on Israel from Gaza and from South Lebanon. And it is helping in many ways, along with funds from Saudi Arabia, sustain the war against the Americans and the Iraqi people in Iraq.”

The picture that Gingrich and his hawkish allies paint is one in which the nebulous enemy is, quite simply, a vast network of everyone who opposes the American/Israeli military-industrial geostrategic map: “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. You've got to understand these dictatorships all talk to each other . . . There's public footage from North Korean television of the Iranians visiting with Kim Jong Il, the dictator, and a North Korean missile manufacturing facility.

The Iranians have now unveiled a statue of Simón Bolívar in Tehran to prove their solidarity with Venezuela. I mean, these folks think on a global basis."

Gingrich claims that it’s time for America to recognize this grander conspiratorial context and get much harder on national security. There is, however, some reason to believe that he is just playing politics. According to a recent Seattle Times article, Gingrich told the paper he is “very worried” that the Republicans will lose the House in the upcoming congres-sional election. He went on to say that the rhetoric of a new World War should amplify American solidarity and motivate the public to get back behind the Republicans by forcing people to focus on the question, "If we're in the Third World War, which side do you think should win?" Gingrich wants Americans to believe that when it’s the US vs Them, it’s suicidal to stop and reflect on what Israel’s doing to the Palestinians, what exactly America is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, or why big oil and weapons corporations have so much sway over this administration. In George Bush’s parlance, the decision is simple: you’re either with the US or against the US.

Unfortunately, it may not even matter how accurate Gingrich’s portrait is. The most recent allegation that Muslim terrorists were plotting to blow up 10 jets leaving England for the US only fuels the fire and consolidates support for national security zealotry.

Of course, we should be circumspect about the veracity of this new plot. After all, in order to have a feasible pretext to invade Iraq in the first Gulf War, George Bush senior had a young Kuwaiti girl identified only as Nayirah, who later turned out to be the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter, lie to the House of Representatives’ Human Rights Caucus about rabid Iraqi soldiers ripping Kuwaiti babies out of incubators. In the leadup to the war, Bush Sr constantly referred to the incubator incident in order to cement his case for war. More recently, Bush Jr took a page out of his father’s playbook when he contrived an Iraqi connection to 9/11 to get the American public behind the current Iraq War. We should have no illusions about this administration’s willingness to deceive the public in order to achieve its electoral and geostrategic goals.

At this time, there is no way to discern whether the world really is already embroiled in World War III. There has been no clear tipping point. One thing is for sure, however: the hawks’ rhetoric is incredibly dangerous. And when people like Bush and Harper give Israel their unequivocal support and reduce the terrorists’ perspective to a knuckle-dragging hatred of western freedom, they merely compound the problem.

If, in fact, Israel is the nuclear crucible of global conflict, things have to change. As a result of the Palestinians’ plight and Israel’s brutal attacks on Lebanon, the Sunni and Shiite worlds are learning to overcome their differences due to a shared hatred of Israel and America. In fact, in Lebanon, even the Christians and secular socialists are getting behind Hezbollah’s campaign. Things are beginning to snowball out of control, but so much of this could be mitigated if Western politicians—those whose countries have a history of giving Jewish Israel their wholehearted spiritual, financial, and military support, while treating the Palestinians and Israel’s neighbours with draconian disdain—completely transformed Israel’s and America’s approach to the Middle East.

Israel is a tiny country of seven million people living on a landmass that is significantly smaller than Vancouver Island. Yet this little nation’s very presence in the Middle East constitutes a profound disruption for its neighbours and, increasingly, many of its inhabitants. Israeli and Western politicians are quick to characterize this effect as the result of Islamo-fascist hatred of Western democratic freedom. Though there is some truth to this claim, the reality is far more complex. What Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and al Qaeda hate most about joint Israeli-US activities in the region is the freedom with which the US and Israel arrogate its governments, resources, and people for their own narcissistic purposes. As such, with or without the apartheid wall, Israel, far more than even the United States, is the ultimate gated community. And like the inhabitants of all gated communities, its leaders tend to demonstrate incredible ignorance of, and arrogance towards, the outside world that props up their little bubble.

But just as 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan have revealed the cracks and fissures in rigid Fortress America, Israel’s bellicosity towards the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran threatens to set in motion a chain of events that could bring it down like a house of cards. If the Bush, Blair, and Harper administrations have any sense, rather than further fomenting World War III, they’ll have a change of faith and recognize that, as much as gated-community dwellers hate to compromise, the underprivileged world outside deserves it due.

Israel and the West should get the ball rolling by getting Israel out of Lebanon and beginning work on a viable, contiguous Palestine. Otherwise, it may only be a matter of time before their bubble pops.

danadleman@gmail.com