World War IV is alreadya reality
By Arnaud De Borchgrave,UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, (UPI) -- Wake up America, youare already in World War IV. That is the staccato rat-tat-ratmessage coursing through television talk shows by those who seethemselves as latter day Churchills.
The theoretician-in-chief is R. James Woolsey,a former CIA director during the Clinton administration, whoselucubrations bear serious examination. The United States and itsallies fought three world wars -- two "hot" and one"cold"-- in the 20th century. The first world war ofthe 21st century is not a war against terrorism per se. Afterall, Spain's ETA and Ireland's IRA terrorists are not enemiesof America. So the world war now underway, Woolsey argues, isbeing waged on three different but related fronts.
The first major engagement waged againstthe United States in World War IV was in Iran in 1978-79 whenthe Shia clergy seized power and executed more people in threemonths than the deposed shah had done in 30 years. For the antediluvianayatollahs, it was a twofer; U.S. strategy for protecting theGulf and its oil resources, anchored in pro-western Iran's overwhelmingmight, sank like a stone. The seizure of U.S. hostages Nov. 4,1979, 54 of them held for 444 days, and President Carter's ill-fatedrescue mission, completed America's humiliation. Next to the wickedcruelty of the ayatollahs, the shah was an enlightened liberal.
The Iran-funded, Syria-backed and Lebanon-basedHezbollah terrorist movement has been skirmishing with the UnitedStates and Israel for a quarter of a century. The "fascist"--- Woolsey's tag --- Baath parties of Syria and Iraq are alsopart of the anti-U.S. coalition. The secular Iraqi regime of SaddamHussein took on Islamist camouflage to close ranks with the gatheringjihad, or holy war, against America. Saddam used his own handwritingfor the Allah Akbar -- God is great -- signature on the Iraqinational flag, much the way Stalin used religion to rally hiscountry when Hitler's legions were at the gates of Moscow.
Still Woolsey talking, Saddam, for the pastdecade, flaunting the cease-fire agreements of 1991, ordered hisanti-aircraft batteries to fire at U.S. planes. He also gave theorder for the plot to kill Bush 41 on a visit to Kuwait in 1993.Saddam's links to al Qaida are also beyond dispute. In fact, Saddamwas behind al Qaida as it executed the terrorist attacks of Sept.11, 2001.
World War IV warriors argue Osama bin Ladenand his acolytes do not have the sophistication to have choreographedsomething as complex as the simultaneous hijacking of four largeaircraft and their instant transformation into suicide bombers.
Sunni Muslim terrorists abandoned theirtargets close to home, such as Egypt's Islamic Jihad, to casttheir lot with bin Laden and his global terror network againstthe "crusaders and the Jews" --- the United States andIsrael. This is what finally got Washington's attention, likeHitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 that triggered World War II.
Woolsey, in his now almost daily publicappearances, says that the fourth world war has been almost entirelyfinanced by Saudi Arabian wealth through the conduit of that country'sfossilized Wahhabi clergy. The former intelligence chief who knewa thing or two when he ran the CIA compares Wahhabi religiousrule to the Spanish Inquisition. They have their hatred of Jewsin common. But instead of the Inquisition's rack, the Wahhabisprefer amputating the hands of thieves and stoning adulteresses(but not adulterers) to death. And this is what's sitting on 25percent of the world's oil reserves, Woolsey says with mock disbelief.
The United States should be clear-eyed aboutthe dangers lurking at home. The Wahhabis receive huge resourcesfrom the Saudi government. Their missionaries in the United Statesteach a hostile brand of Islam, Woolsey asserts with the knowledgeof an insider, "but we cannot allow this to become a waron Islam." There are belligerent "sleeper" cellsin the United States, "and they are not a tiny number."To cope with this phenomenon, Woolsey recommends that we takea closer look at MI5, the British domestic counter-intelligenceservice whose main job was to keep tabs on Soviet spies duringthe Cold War and on the IRA's underground network of terrorists.Islamist extremists protected by radical British passport-holdingImams and their mosques are now on MI5's list of subversive priorities."The Brits have managed to protect civil liberties whilesecuring the home front," he adds, "and we must jealouslysafeguard our freedoms."
Why did the United States somnambulate throughthe early phases of World War IV with a sign on our backs thatsaid, "Kick Me." It was, he answers, because of themistaken belief that Saudi Arabia was our friendly neighborhoodgas station. But Americans are resented, if not hated, throughoutthe Middle East because "of what we've done right --- equalityfor women, freedom of religion and expression, freedom of thepress, freedom to chose our leaders in free and fair elections.
There are only two countries in the Mideast,Woolsey says, where Americans are popular among the masses ---Iran and Iraq.
They are both ripe for liberation. OnceAmerica has freed Iraq from its fascist dictator's totalitariangrip, the moss-grown mythological clerics next door should self-destruct,according to Woolsey. "A liberated Iraq will act as a powerfulmagnet, but there would be nothing more stupid than to use forceagainst Iran," he says. "Sixty percent of the populationis under 25. The ruling mullahs have lost the support of women.They are now like Soviet rulers in the Kremlin as communism crumbledthroughout the empire or the French royal family at Versailleslistening to the anger of the populace."