A US hardliner view
'It's World War III'
And Bush should proclaim it, says former House speaker Newt Gingrich. By
David Postman. Seattle Times.
Jul 17, 2006

Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and
President Bush should say so.

In an interview in Bellevue this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session
of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in
much starker terms than have been heard from the president.

"We need to have the militancy that says 'We're not going to lose a city,' " Gingrich
said. He talks about the need to recognise World War III as important for military
strategy and political strategy.

Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republicans facing fall elections and says
the party must have the "nerve" to nationalise the elections and make the 2006
campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush's
record.

Gingrich says that as of now Republicans "are sailing into the wind" in congressional
campaigns.

He said that's in part because of the Iraq war, adding, "Iraq is hard and painful and we
do not explain it very well."

But some of it is due to Republicans' congressional agenda. He said House and
Senate Republicans "forgot the core principle" of the party and embraced
Congressional pork. "Some of the guys," he said, have come down with a case of
"incumbentitis."

Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the
Administration, about the need to recognise that America is in World War III.

He lists wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, this week's bomb attacks in India, North Korean
nuclear threats, terrorist arrests and investigations in Florida, Canada and Britain,
and violence in Israel and Lebanon as evidence of World War III.

He said Bush needed to deliver a speech to Congress and "connect all the dots" for
Americans.

He said the reluctance to put those pieces together and see one global conflict is
hurting America's interests.

He said people, including some in the Bush Administration, who urge a restrained
response from Israel are wrong "because they haven't crossed the bridge of realising
this is a war."

"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for
restraint would fall away: "Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there
was a single missile there.

"I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane
trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down.

"This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to
kill us and we get to talk, is nuts."

There is a public relations value, too. Gingrich said that public opinion can change "the
minute you use the language" of World War III.

The message then, he said, is "'OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you
think should win?"

An historian, Gingrich said he has been studying recently how Abraham Lincoln talked
to Americans about the Civil War, and what turned out to be a much longer and
deadlier war than Lincoln expected...(truncated for brevity).

For full report:
http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/archives/2006/07/gingrich_says_its_world_war_iii.html