What if they threw a World War and nobody came? Lately it seems like the tide has turned against President Bush. The intransigence of the rebellion in Iraq combined with the Senate Select Committee's scalding indictment of the Administration's rock hard certainty of Iraq's WMD capability have been a pair of roundhouse blows to the esteem of this White House. Couple that with the audible murmurs from the Right for Bush to jettison the man most responsible for these blunders, Dick Cheney, from the ticket, and you can see why the Left is collectively whistling "Eye of the Tiger." Now mix in the handsome dynamic hair duo of John Kerry and John "did you honestly believe he would choose Gephardt?" Edwards with the targeted agitprop of Fahrenheit 9/11 and brother, you've got a horse race that seemed pretty damn unlikely after a certain day in September. The Democrats are energized to bring down Bush, even if they are more tepid in their passion for the party's "Dream Team" (leave it to Kerry to christen the ticket himself. He must have detected the words weren't exactly leaping to the mouths of his supporters). The Right, on the other hand, seems to be sensing that its only domestic achievement this term, the tax cuts (snore), might not be enough to offset the unemployment and pump prices that the middle class wound up spending that chump change on. They are now chasing the patriot vote as though Lady Liberty herself were bobbing in shark infested waters wearing a spent tampon. Trouble is, Bush has already wrapped himself so tightly in the flag that he's losing sensation in his limbs. Political necrosis does not intimidate those who make their living off the non-stop campaign trail of talk radio, however. It would be tedious at this point to belabor the bitter soapboxing of the airwaves' usual suspects (a Constitutional Amendment denouncing Fox News and their adjunct celebrities will probably make it into the final draft of the Democratic Party Platform). Nevertheless, an interesting trend has emerged in the boilerplate that the Right Wing has been using to galvanize the faithful. Apparently speaking in terms of a "War on Terror" doesn't put the fizz in the listeners' Fresca the way it used to, so they've quietly collaborated on changing the terms of the discussion. They've declared World War III. If you've ever listened to several different conservative talk shows in a single afternoon you know that their hosts all speak with remote controlled tongues. If George Soros is cramping Rush Limbaugh's style today, then you can bet your bottom Sacagawea that Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham have a hair up their ass about him too. If Hillary Clinton is today's liberal menace on the Sean Hannity show... Well, pathological Hillary bashing is de rigeur any day of the week on these programs, but you get the point. There is one Host with many names, and that Host is no longer only selling mattresses and fat loss snake oil. He's selling Armageddon. In the last two weeks I have heard Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Mike Gallagher all refer to our nation's conflict as "World War III." Not to get a rise out of lefties, but blithely, as if it were a matter of fact, and those too stupid not to realize it had better wake up and smell the ovens. I feel the adoption of this tact needs to be addressed. Mind you, the belief that 9/11 ushered in the End of Days (World War III's religious brand name) did not wait until now to emerge. New York Times foreign affairs correspondent Thomas Friedman was asking "Does my country really understand that this is World War III?" a mere two days after 9/11. Not to fault the man's clairvoyance, but he also observed that "The only people who can penetrate these shadowy and ever-mutating [terrorist] groups, and deter them, are their own societies. And even they can't do it consistently. So give the C.I.A. a break." Friedman was of course ignorant, as was the CIA, of the talents of Taco Bell Chalupa assembler Jose Padilla, the Lackawanna Six and undoubtedly a raft of other savants who went unrecruited by Langley. Not being able to tell the difference between the grotesque sucker punches of a corrupt and decentralized religious movement and the armed conquest of nations is a perfect example of why the conservatives can not be allowed to define the terms of this conflict, much less lead the fucking fight. Calling this conflict World War III bespeaks the precious self-delusion that could only shroud a nation utterly out of touch with its own history and the prevailing state of world affairs. As noble as our efforts to turn back the tide of tyranny has been in the past, America has never flinched from inducing roughly the same amount of suffering in the name of its own authority. From our blood soaked dalliance in Vietnam to our catastrophic duplicity in East Timor to the marauding Contra hordes, we've inflicted grievous harm in our day. And to hear a bunch of political shills crap their pants and cry "Apocalypse!" now that we've tasted a tiny dose of that pain ourselves for the first time in 60 years must have a few of Augusto Pinochet's victims spinning in their unmarked graves. World War III? Third World War is more like it. But the Third World is always at war. The difference is that for the first time in a long time we are the ones firing the guns instead of selling them. But this argument is lost on the people that the declaration of World War is meant to arouse: Southern Evangelists, those pious hayseeds who are allegedly the most fearful of God's wroth yet most desirous to witness the Holy Scrimage. In other words, George Bush's last hope. In 2000, it was a unified front of bible humpers that rescued George Bush and his Right Wing in a campaign that alienated many traditional Republican power bases. Now, with blood flowing as rapidly from the President's wounds as it is from the stumps of mangled soldiers, George needs that chorus of amens more than ever. But with the "Evil One" still unsmoked from his hole, and with the list of terrorist big wigs growing faster than our president' ability to pronounce them, it only makes sense to blame the Beast Master, that old foe of foes, and hope enough Christians can be made fearful of the moon turning to sack cloth to hand Bush another electoral college victory. Bush certainly can't run on his war record anymore. Having failed to define just how a nation fights a "new kind of war," much less wins one, the President dashed headlong into the brick wall of Iraq and in the process emasculated any argument for preemption as a defensible means of unseating "outlaw regimes." We can certainly never again hope for even the tepid support we barely received from the UN in any further adventurism, and if anything it has become clear that without the help of global allies a war effort can begin to take on water pretty damn fast. In fact the Administration is so desperate for victories that don't call for "regime change" they have begun to tout Libya as the latest example of Armageddon averted. Libya, which despite having a documented history of launching terrorist attacks as well as a verified WMD program, did NOT make it onto the Axis of Evil short list or into any post-9/11 debate on the terrorist threat. Yet somehow Libya is proof of Bush's mad skillz because, in exchange for normalized relations with the US, Moamarr Ghadaffi recently coughed up everything Libya has produced towards building a nuke and has begun to scale back its chemical weapons stocks. The inoculating powers of the Bush Doctrine at work, yes? Not so fast. While the heat the US has put on it's enemies can assuredly by said to have given Libya something to think about, the fact is that Ghadaffi has been mellowing for over a decade. His willingness to finally admit culpability for the Lockerbie disaster preceded 9/11, as did the thawing of his revolutionary, anti-western rhetoric. Libya's leader is a strongman, not a madman, and his WMD program's were universally recognized to be defensive, not offensive, in nature If anything, the mending of fences with Libya is a triumph for quiet diplomacy and the efficacy of sanctions, something the Bush administration does not want trumpeted too loudly. It certainly does not play into the Party banner wavers strategy of Doomsday conflict between the Coalition of the Willing and...wait, who are our enemies in World War III again? Iraq? It certainly seems like WW3 inside that cauldron, but tying this fight to the War on Terror is starting to become a threadbare argument. It is becoming increasingly obvious, even to oafish patriots, who the real belligerant in this conflict is. Iran? Mmm. Likely to give us a lot more trouble than Iraq if we were to invade them. We won't be tugging down statues in Tehran anytime soon. North Korea? Whoops! Gots a nuke! Guess we'll let Star Wars be the deterrent there. Afghanistan? heh. Almost forgot about them, dincha? This is the land where the seeds of World War may yet find fertile ground, so it is naturally the place America is paying the least attention to. Ironic? No, predictable. Considering that the Taliban is still on the run (including their leader, Mullah Omar), ditto Osama, and with plenty of sympathizers in Pakistan and a hotbed of Jihadism lying to the north in Central Asia, it only figures that this is where Bush thinks the flag of democracy will never be uprooted. No, to the propagandists on the Right, World War III is made up of the unpredictable potshots taken by Al Qaeda, tactics which have proven effective in splintering both American and allied resolve not because of fear, but because of our President's ability to repeatedly turn victory into failure and his willingness to throw gasoline onto smoldering embers before extinguishing even a single blaze. For Dubya's defenders though, the war Al Qaeda cannot win and which the President has decided will not end is the war WE MUST NOT LOSE!! World War III is the croaking battle cry of a political experiment in muscle flexing that is struggling to tie together the threads of its own legitimacy. If the "conservatives" who care so much for America's safety had put half as much energy into finding a candidate within the Republican Party to run against Bush as they do apologizing for this besotted Howdy Doody, the nation might have a war plan that contained terms for victory, not multi-theater quagmire. Meanwhile the country slouches reluctantly towards the camp of a man whose campaign rallies crank out one dusty 80's pop hit after another in an effort to find a tune the masses will dance to. -Jason