Amid the generally predictable clamour of the latest edition of The Spectator (registration required), Prof. Andrew Bacevich has some rather more interesting commentary on the alarmists declaring WWIII, WWIV or, if we are very lucky, WWV (which is much easier to write).  After reviewing the origins of the ridiculous WWIV label, Prof. Bacevich says:

We are now in a position to evaluate the results. Bluntly, a contrived and phony version of history has yielded a demented strategy. A Churchillian Bush imagined that Operation Iraqi Freedom might provide his ‘Finest Hour’ — an act of liberation that would jumpstart the democratic transformation of the Greater Middle East. Instead Iraq has become Bush’s Gallipoli, a sinkhole into which he has not yet ceased to pour American treasure, military strength and credibility. Although Bush succeeded in toppling his stand-in for Hitler (while Osama bin Laden, the actual architect of 9/11, still remains at large), the Iraqis have refused to follow their assigned script. Unlike the compliant Germans after 1945, they have not submitted. Instead they resist, seeing their liberators as an army of occupation and pursuing their own political agenda which has a lot more to do with sectarian divisions than Jeffersonian ideals.

In the Persian Gulf more broadly, ‘liberation’ has produced not a peace but more violence; at home, it has meant not assured supplies of oil but higher prices at the gas pump. Rather than pacifying the region, the Bush Doctrine has destabilised it, exacerbating tensions between Shia and Sunni and emboldening the mullahs of Tehran. Supplanting autocrats with democrats was supposed to pave the way for settling old disputes. It has turned out to be somewhat more complicated than that. A democratic uprising in Lebanon has not made that country any less hospitable to Hezbollah. Among the Palestinians, meanwhile, free elections have handed power to those most stubbornly opposed to Israel’s existence.

Prof. Bacevich makes other wise comments on the unrepeatability of historical events and reminds us that past conflicts, such as WWII, cannot serve as universal templates of conduct that lead us on the path of “moral clarity.”  If the people who invented the nonsense of talking about WWIV knew any history beyond a couple of decades in the 20th century (and even these they do not seem to know all that well), they might not have embraced a vision inspired by simplistic, self-serving accounts of the past.