The Fourth World War Is Taking Shape

For those who are keeping count, many contend that the Cold War was World War III.

From the New Yorker:

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

Further:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

If President Bush is actually planning for an invasion of Iran as the only serious outcome of the current faceoff, it can be said with all seriousness that he has made a conscious decision to escalate the terror attacks on 9/11/01 to a full-blown World War. After Afghanistan, President Bush wrongly decided to attack Iraq, and now is aiming to attack Iran. If this comes to pass, President Bush will have succeeded not in "saving Iran," but in precipitating exactly the kind of conflict warned against in Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
From a MoveOn email:

By the way, there's a very eerie similarity between what President Bush and his allies are saying now and what they said in the run-up to war against Iraq three years ago:


THEN: George W. Bush, November 12, 2002: "We don't know how close he is today, but a Saddam Hussein with a nuclear weapon is a grave, grave threat to America and our friends and allies.

NOW: George W. Bush, January 16, 2006: "Iran armed with a nuclear weapon poses a grave threat to the security of the world."

THEN: Donald Rumsfeld, September 19, 2002: ". . . No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."

NOW: George W. Bush, March 16, 2006: "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran. (Thanks to this post at the Daily Kos for assembling these quotes.)