Are we on the brink of WWIII?

Question

Seems like N. Korea and Iran are competing regarding who will have the first in nuclear weapons. Neither view the U.S. kindly. What are the facts and point of views??

Answer 1

Not on the brink, we are in the opening act. The Great Religion War. I guess some people asked that same question when Hitler invaded Poland but I'm pretty sure the Jews that were being killed on sight would have figured it out pretty quickly. The attacks on the World Trade Center was the "Curtain up". Wars are hardly ever about just one thing or other. They act as the catalyst for many other dissatisfaction's and perceived indignities from past inequities. It's not so much that we Americans are bad people, it's just that we can't see life through the eyes of the worlds disadvantaged. We are so fortunate that we just don't understand why everyone else is not happy for us.

Answer 2

Fact: North Korea seems to have accumulated an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Iran is quite possibly on the road to this, although I have heard it said that they may be several years from being fully capable of producing a good weapon.

Observation: Neither North Korea nor Iran can possibly defeat the U.S. in a war; to employ a nuke against the U.S. would likely result in those nations being devastated beyond repair almost instantaneously
Regarding the term "World War III": An interesting opinion from an interesting website worth perusing (see source):

Opinion: The leaders of these nations are playing politics with big toys. They want to be relevant in the world stage. They want to give their people something to unite behind and focus on besides questionable (Iran) to atrocious (DPRK) societies (in general).

Point: The real danger is not these nations themselves, but what their weapons could be used for in the hands of the desperate groups that would not hesitate to use them, ie terrorist organizations.

An interesting observation from an interesting site (see source):

"As some consider the Cold War to have been "WWIII", they also view the so-called War on Terrorism as being "WWIV", and the term is occasionally used in the United States political and policy debates that continue in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. As long ago as 1992, Count de Marenches, the former head of French intelligence, wrote a book[[1]] alleging that a "fourth world war", of terrorism versus civilization, was taking place. As a designation for the post-9/11 war on terrorism, its use was first proposed by Eliot A. Cohen in his opinion piece written for the Wall Street Journal opinion page on November 20, 2001 titled, "World War IV: Let's call this conflict what it is." A core quotation from his thesis is:

The Cold War was World War III, which reminds us that not all global conflicts entail the movement of multimillion-man armies, or conventional front lines on a map. The analogy with the Cold War does, however, suggest some key features of that conflict: that it is, in fact, global; that it will involve a mixture of violent and nonviolent efforts; that it will require mobilization of skill, expertise and resources, if not of vast numbers of soldiers; that it may go on for a long time; and that it has ideological roots.

Four days before Cohen's words were published, James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave a speech at Restoration Weekend, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, titled World War IV, in which he outlines the entire rationale for fighting World War IV. In the most provocative portion if his speech, he says:

But, I would say this. Both to the terrorists and to the pathological predators such as Saddam Hussein and to the autocrats as well, the barbarics, the Saudi royal family. They have to realize that now for the fourth time in 100 years, we've been awakened and this country is on the march. We didn't choose this fight, but we're in it. And being on the march, there's only one way we're going to be able to win it. It's the way we won World War I fighting for Wilson's 14 points. The way we won World War II fighting for Churchill's and Roosevelt's Atlantic Charter and the way we won World War III fighting for the noble ideas I think best expressed by President Reagan, but also very importantly at the beginning by President Truman, that this was not a war of us against them. It was not a war of countries. It was a war of freedom against tyranny. We have to convince the people of the Middle East that we are on their side, as we convinced Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel and Andrei Sakharov that we were on their side."

History generally has not agreed that WWIII has occured yet, though

Answer 3

Since this war on terrorism is a global war, not just limited to Iraq and Afghanistan, I consider us in WWIII. I do not say this like the Libs do. I believe we should fight this like we did WWII and wipe all those sorry SOB's of the face of the Earth.

Answer 4

no we'll kick the koreans butts in a war and iran doesn't really compare to n. korea

Answer 5

YES

Answer 6

we are all gonna die