Newt Gingrich Calls on Pres. Bush to Declare World War III

The Republicans are scared to death of losing control of Congress and therefore bringing that old-fashioned idea of checks and balances back to the American political system. With a right wing ideologue in the White House and right wing ideologues controlling Congress and the court system populated with right wing ideologues appointed by Pres. Bush and confirmed by the GOP Congress the plain simple truth is that there hasn’t been any checks and balances in America for the past five years or so. Knowing that Bush will still be in the White House for the next two years regardless of who controls Congress, the neocons realize that they may be in danger of losing that precious hold on all those checks and balances come November. Well, of course, that’s what you get for acting as a rubber stamp for such things as going to war for no reason, trying to outlaw civil rights, and taking money from Jack Abramoff. With no actual issue with which to present themselves to the voters in November as being competent lawmakers, you better be prepared for the three words that your Republican candidates will be spouting throughout the campaign season this year.

World War III.

Newt Gingrich recently declared that we are at the beginning of World War III. Israel’s psychotic overreaction to having two of their soldiers kidnapped, and Hezbollah’s equally psychotic reaction to having Israel shoot their wad at them is a sign that World War III has arrived, you see. Newt Gingrich likes to call himself a historian, but frankly I think his history book here is the Book of Revelation. I’m sure he’s trying to tie together the whole apocalypse thing to this ten millionth round of violence between Jews and Muslims. But according to Newt Gingrich this time it is serious. It’s World War III.

There is another reason why Newt Gingrich is trying to sell the world that we’re on the brink of an apocalyptic trip to Armageddon. Pres. Bush’s war on terror has been going on for almost five years now. In that time as many Americans have died in Iraq as died on 9/11. In fact, more Americans have died as a result of terrorist activity around the world since Pres. Bush took office than died during Bill Clinton’s entire two year term. In other words, the war on terror isn’t going so well. In fact, it is beginning to look like it may be Pres. Bush’s most horrific legacy and that is saying something: 9/11, budget deficits, doubling of gas prices, incompetent response to natural disasters, domestic spying, impeachable offenseâÂ?¦the list goes on. But the ineptitude surrounding first the very idea that Pres. Bush has mandated billions to fight a war declared against an abstract noun, and secondly that he can’t even win a war against an abstract noun is probably going to be the one issue that even Bush won’t attempt to justify when he hires someone to write hit memoirs.

So, since the war on terror has turned into something that nobody in the Republican party would dare run on, it’s time to turn it into something that can be freshly manipulated. World War III will be the tagline in so many GOP campaign commercials that you will be nauseated with the term by election day. You will be inundated with campaign commercials showing footage of Israelis being attacked (but not Israel attacking Lebanese civilians), and 9/11, and Saddam statues being topples with the implication that World War III has begun. And only the Republicans have the backbone to carry it through and win it.

Yes, the testicles of GOP lawmakers-even the female ones-will be so large that they will try to paint themselves as the only party to be trusted to ensure your safety as World War III sweeps across the globe. Just remember that out of Pres. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and Karl Rove the only one with any experience in winning a war on the battlefield isâÂ?¦well, none of them. Not one single person running the war on terror has any battlefield experience. Same with Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist and most of the GOP Committee chairs in Congress. Heck, if you wanted to find a bunch of people more unqualified to run World War III for America you’d probably have to go to your local elementary school. Third graders are probably more qualified than these chickenhawks, so you’d better stick with second graders and under.

World War III. It’s much scarier sounding than the war on terror. And Newt Gingrich knows that. He’s got his eye, for some insane reason, on winning the White House for himself in 2008. Well, I suppose even Newt would look good after the nightmare that George W. Bush has been. Newt Gingrich knows that by the time Bush finally drags his sorry ass out of the Oval Office and goes on a decades long bender trying to escape his own sorry legacy that it will be all but impossible for a conservative Republican to get elected to the White House in any honest way. Not that any conservative Republican has ever attained the White House in any honest way, of course, but you know what I mean. He will have to ramp up the fear factor much higher than simply getting us terrified of terrorists all over again. We will have to be afraid of losing our very way of life. Our very souls.

World War III has indeed begun. Not for real, of course, not in any battlefield way-by the way, Newt also managed to avoid stepping foot in Vietnam despite being a Young Republican at the time who was trumpeting his support for the US presence there-but World War III has begun as a propaganda device. There is absolutely no reason why any swing voter would vote for a Republican candidate for Congress in the fall. They and they alone bear the brunt of the Iraq quagmire, the Katrina disaster, rising gasoline prices, spending time and money trying to get through amendments to outlaw gay marriage and flag burning while completely ignoring the health care crisis this country facesâÂ?¦and the list goes on. They were able to pull the wool over a lot of voters’ eyes on the issue of security and military strength, but with the single most ineffective and incompetent and ill-planned and ill-executed military campaign in the history of the United States on their hands, they can no longer depend on that. They have only one recourse left. Scare people into thinking that not only World War III is imminent, but Biblical Armageddon.

Here’s the thing, though. The Book of Revelation is not meant to be taken literally. There isn’t going to be any end of days or Armageddon or apocalypse or rapture. If people would make the effort to research these things, they would find that most of the crap being peddled in those Left Behind books and other end of days material sprang forth from the mind of a 19th century evangelist named John Nelson Darby. The whole idea of end of days ending with the rapture was invented by him, not by any writer of the Bible. Look it up yourself. If you can find the word “rapture” anywhere in your Bible, you should be prepared to sue the store where you bought it; what you’ve got there is a defective Bible. World War III isn’t here and if it was, it would have nothing to do with The Book of Revelation.

It has everything to do with The Book of Karl Rove, however.