Are We Headed for World War III?
I don’t know if you’ve bothered to notice, but there’s still a war going on in the Middle East. Indeed, the war is not only almost a year old, but now includes more countries and combatants than when the fighting first erupted last October with an attack by Hamas on a kibbutz located about 3 kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
Israel is now not just fighting against Hamas; it’s also fighting against Hezbollah. And the violence not only is occurring both within Gaza and Israel, but has also spread into Lebanon, with warlike noises also coming out of Iran.
Taken together, the countries which are to a lesser or greater degree involved in this conflict cover an area of some 6,000 square miles with a total population of some 280 million, give or take a few million here and there.
Maybe this doesn’t quite make the current conflict into a world war, but it will do as a serious conflict, nonetheless.
Where does the U.S. stand in all this mess? Notwithstanding Donald Trump’s usual stupidity about how he could end the whole conflict in a couple days if not just a few minutes, there are still 7 Americans being held hostage in Gaza or somewhere by Hamas, and if we have a plan for locating where they are and getting them out, it’s a plan being kept very quiet and not being acted upon at all.
In fact, what had been negotiations for a ceasefire and a hostage release seem to have come to an end with the Israelis adopting a much more aggressive strategy not only against Hamas but against the Hezbollah terrorists as well.
This past Thursday, Tim Walz met with families of the U.S. hostages and said all the correct and proper things that have been said about this situation for the past year. Meanwhile, on the same day he was voicing ‘concern’ for the lack of a hostage deal, Israel blew up hundreds of cell phones and walkie-talkies allegedly carried by Hezbollah activists in Lebanon, killing almost 40 people and injuring several thousand more.
For all the violence which is occurring on a non-stop basis in the Middle East, the amount of news coverage of this problem in the United States seems to have lessened to a significant degree. And I believe that the reason why Gaza now gets less attention on the evening news than a two-day storm on the Gulf Coast or another wildfire in California reflects the fact that all those tent cities which appeared on college campuses last year holding students protesting Israel’s military slam of Gaza have disappeared.
Remember the big deal the GOP tried to make out of campus antisemitism last year? Recall how that egregiously stupid Elise Stefanik got a week’s worth of free publicity by hammering away at the Presidents of three Ivy League schools?
That was last year, and I’m willing to bet that the GOP’s concern for anti-Semitic behavior in the United States would still be a major political issue were it not for the fact that their leading man, Donald Trump, can’t seem to figure out whether attacking Israel or defending Israel helps or hurts his campaign.
Either way, the bottom line is that as long as the nearly 40,000 troops and 6 warships we have in the region stay out of harm’s way, the fighting between Israel versus terrorist organizations and their nation-state protectors can go on and even escalate without creating much of a dent in the average American mind.
There is something to be said about the fact that the only ‘invasion’ of U.S. soil is the hapless immigrants who try to sneak over or across the Rio Grande. And even though there’s an occasional mention of North Korea testing a missile which could maybe make it across the Pacific to Guam, every morning when I drive to work, I pass the Air Force Reserve base which has a squadron of C-5A transports and another squadron of F-35 fighter jets.
Do I worry about World War III? Like I worry about whether I can afford to pay four dollars for the 12-ounce cup of coffee that’s waiting at the Starbucks drive-thru lane for me.