World War What, Part 2

Yesterday Gregory Djerejian linked to a superb Financial Times piece by Gideon Rachman explaining why interpreting the conflicts in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan - together with the confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program - as evidence of the onset of World War III totally misrepresents the nature of what it is we are fighting. One of the reasons so many neo-conservatives love the "World War" analogy is that it allows them to affix the "appeaser" label on anyone who views Islamo-Fascism as anything other than a military target. But as Rachman notes,

there have been other events in history besides appeasement and there are other decades that can be learnt from besides the 1930s. In fact, the struggle between western liberalism and Islamism may end up looking a lot more like the cold war than the second world war....Then, as now, there were episodes of “hot war” – in Korea and elsewhere. But the cold war ultimately turned on a struggle between ideologies and social systems, rather than armies.

Communism finally imploded because it could not produce prosperity or a decent society. Militant Islamism – a miserable, medieval philosophy – is bound ultimately to go the same way...Incapable of offering the hope of a decent life (at least on earth), Islamism’s only real recruiting sergeant is an appeal to a sense of Muslim humiliation and rage against the west. There may be further occasions when the “war on terror” requires military action.

But each new military front will be eagerly greeted by Islamists as a validation of their world view. It is no accident that one man who would happily embrace Mr Gingrich’s vision of a “third world war” is Osama bin Laden.