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Roundup: Media's Take

John Brown: Why World War IV Is a Misnomer

John Brown, at tomdispatch.com (3-30-05):

[John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer who resigned in protest against the invasion of Iraq, is affiliated with Georgetown University. Brown compiles a daily Public Diplomacy Press Review (PDPR) available free by requesting it at johnhbrown30@hotmail.com. Aside from public diplomacy, PDPR covers items such as anti-Americanism, cultural diplomacy, propaganda, foreign public opinion, and American popular culture abroad.]

In a recent essay (Are We in World War IV?) Tom Engelhardt commented quite rightly that"World War IV" has"become a commonplace trope of the imperial right." But he didn't mention one small matter -- the rest of our country, not to speak of the outside world, hasn't bought the neocons' efforts to justify the President's militaristic adventures abroad with crude we're-in-World War IV agitprop meant to mobilize Americans in support of the administration's foreign policy follies. That's why, in his second term, George W. Bush -- first and foremost a politician concerned about maintaining domestic support -- is talking ever less about waging a global war and ever more about democratizing the world.

A Neocon Global War

The neocons have long paid lip service to the need for democracy in the Middle East, but their primary emphasis has been on transformation by war, not politics. You'll remember that, according to our right-wing world warriors, we're inextricably engaged in a planetary struggle against fanatic Muslim fundamentalists. There will, they assure us, be temporary setbacks in this total generational conflict, as was the case during World War II and the Cold War (considered World War III by neocons), but we can win in the end if we "stay the course" with patriotic fortitude. Above all, we must not be discouraged by the gory details of the real, nasty war in Iraq in which we're already engaged, despite the loss of blood and treasure involved. Like so many good Soviet citizens expecting perfect Communism in the indeterminate future, all we have to do is await the New American Century that will eventually be brought into being by the triumphs of American arms (and neocon cheerleading).

Since at least 9/11, the neocons have rambled on… and on… about"World War IV." But no matter how often they've tried to beat the phrase into our heads, it hasn't become part of the American mindset. Peace and honest work, not perpetual war and senseless conflict, still remain our modest ideals -- even with (because of?) the tragedy of the Twin Towers. True, right before the presidential election, WWIV surfaced again and again in the media, fed by neocon propaganda; and even today it appears here and there, though as often in criticism as boosterism. Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo have recently used the phrase to criticize neocon hysteria in their columns; and in its winter 2005 issue, the Wilson Quarterly published"World War IV," an important article by Andrew J. Bacevich, which turns the neocons' argument on its head by suggesting that it was the U.S. which started a new world war -- a disastrous struggle for control of Middle Eastern oil reserves -- during the Carter administration. For Bacevich, it appears, the neocons' cherished verbal icon should not be a call to arms, but a sad reminder of the hubris of military overreach.

Try It Long

For all the absurdity of their arguments, neocons are, in many ways, men of ideas. But they do not live on another planet. They know that"World War IV" or even the milder"Global War on Terrorism" are not the first things ordinary Americans have in their thoughts when they get up in the morning ("Does anyone still remember the war on terror?" asked that master of the zeitgeist, Frank Rich of the New York Times, early in January). This unwillingness among us mere mortals to see the world in terms of a universal death struggle, which neocon sympathizer Larry Haas, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, believes is caused by "our faith in rationality," upsets some of the Spengler-like neocons, most noticeably their cantankerous dean, Norman Podhoretz.

In February in Commentary (a magazine he once edited), Podhoretz offered the world The War Against World War IV, a follow-up to his portentous and historically falsifying September 2004 piece, World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win. In his latest piece, stormin' Norman castigates Americans right and left -- including"isolationists of the paleoconservative Right,""Michael Moore and all the other hard leftists holed up in Hollywood, the universities, and in the intellectual community at large," and"liberal internationalists" -- for being"at war" with his Rosemary's baby"World War IV." Somewhat defensively (for a rabid warmonger), he assures us that we, the American people, will, despite the best efforts of the critics, continue to support Mr. Bush, who in turn will not fail to uphold the"Bush Doctrine," which reflects, Podhoretz leaves no doubt, his own"brilliant" World War IV ideas (as admiring fellow neo-pundit William Safire described them in a New York Times column last August).

Mr. Podhoretz is angry at those who simply cannot accept his crude Hobbesian view of humanity, so he keeps shouting at us, but less virulent neocons and their allies, realizing"WWIV" has not caught on, are thinking up new terms to con Americans into the neos' agenda of total war.

Foremost among these is"the long war," evoking -- to my mind at least -- World War I,"the Great War" as it was known, which did so much to lead to the rise of fascism in Europe. (But how many Americans actually care about WWI?) A Google search reveals that as early as May, 2002, in a Cato Policy Analysis,"Building Leverage in the Long War: Ensuring Intelligence Community Creativity in the Fight Against Terrorism," James W. Harris wrote of a"long war" in describing post-9/11 world tensions. In June of last year, John C. Wohlstetter, a Senior Fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, proclaimed:

"Now George W. Bush must rally the nation in the latest fight to the finish between imperfect civilization and perfect barbarism, that of free countries versus mega-death terror from both ‘WMD states' and groups like al-Qai'da. The Gipper's testamentary gift to us is what should be our goal in a long war that strategist Eliot Cohen calls World War IV."

Podhoretz himself mentioned the"long war" in his September Commentary article."[W]e are only," he noted,"in the very early stages of what promises to be a very long war." But the real star of the long-war proponents is Centcom commander General John Abizaid, about whom pro-Iraqi invasion journalist David Ignatius wrote a fawning portrait in the Washington Post in late December."If there is a modern Imperium Americanum," Ignatius announced,"Abizaid is its field general." Playing the role of intrepid"action" journalist at the forefront of the global battle lines in"Centcom's turbulent center of operations," Ignatius breathlessly informs his readers that

"I traveled this month with Abizaid as he visited Iraq and other areas of his command. Over several days, I heard him discuss his strategy for what he calls the ‘Long War' to contain Islamic extremism … Abizaid believes that the Long War is only in its early stages. Victory will be hard to measure, he says, because the enemy won't wave a white flag and surrender one day … America's enemies in this Long War, he argues, are what he calls ‘Salafist jihadists.' That's his term for the Muslim fundamentalists who use violent tactics to try to re-create what they imagine was the pure and perfect Islamic government of the era of the prophet Muhammed, who is sometimes called the ‘Salaf.'"

So now we understand why we're in a Long War: to free ourselves of the salacious Salaf.

If You think It's Not Long Enough, How About Millennium?

Former CIA Director James Woolsey, an early proponent of WWIV, is now turned on by the Long War idea as well. In December, in remarks titled The War for Democracy he said:

"Well, let me share a few thoughts with you this morning on what I have come to call the Long War of the 21st Century. I used to call it World War IV, following my friend Eliot Cohen, who called it that in an op-ed right after 9/11 in the Wall Street Journal. Eliot's point is that the Cold War was World War III. And this war is going to have more in common with the Cold War than with either World War I or II.

"But people hear the phrase World War and they think of Normandy and Iwo Jima and short, intense periods of principally military combat. I think Eliot's point is the right one, which is that this war will have a strong ideological component and will last some time. So, in order to avoid the association with World Wars I and II, I started calling it the Long War of the 21st Century. Now, why do I think it's going to be long? First of all, it is with three totalitarian movements coming out of the Middle East."

The three totalitarian movements, Woolsey goes on to say, are"Middle East Fascists";"the Vilayat Faqih, the Rule of the Clerics in Tehran -- Khamenei, Rafsanjani and his colleagues"; and"the Islamists of Al Qaeda's stripe, underpinned, in many ways, by the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia."

With all this war-talk from the neocons, it's always reassuring to hear the voices of those who, if our world warriors had their way, would enthusiastically give up their lives for the"long war." On December 31, reader Robert S. Stelzer wrote a letter to the Denver Post in which he said the following regarding Ignatius's paean to Abizaid:

"I interpret the article as a propaganda piece to get the American population used to the idea of a long war, and then a military draft. Maybe we need an empire to maintain our standard of living, but if we have democracy we need an informed electorate."

Despite rare dissident voices like Stelzer's, the reaction of most Americans to the Long War jingle (as to"World War IV") has essentially been that of a silent majority: nothing. Count on the neocon bastion the Weekly Standard (in January) to try to whip up those silent Americans with a ratcheted up attack-the-mortal-enemy battle cry headlined"The Millennium War" by pundit Austin Bay, a colonel, who noted that"the global war on terror is the war's dirt-stupid name. One might as well declare war on exercise as declare war on terror, for terror is only a tactic used by an enemy… In September 2001, I suggested that we call this hideous conflict the Millennium War, a nom de guerre that captures both the chronological era and the ideological dimensions of the conflict."...

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This article first appeared on www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, a long time editor in publishing, the author of The End of Victory Culture, and a fellow of the Nation Institute.