World War Standards

My good friend Newt Gingrich, who looked so Southern that they made him move to the South (Question: Why do Pennsylvanians look so Southern? There's Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum too.) says we are in the middle of World War Three. How fun! Of course, that's if he's right. Really, he raises a lot of good questions.

First, how do you know you're in a world war? Literally speaking I guess you would have to have the whole world involved. The closest we ever got to that was World War Two of course which had all but like ten countries involved, and most of those were non-countries, Afghanistan or so. The First World War never really was one. Why I don't even think there were any Spanish speakers involved. If we're going to count that, then let's just throw the door open why don't we. I always thought the Seven Years War should count. And definitely the Napoleonic Wars.

There are people who like to count the Cold War as World War Three. These people are very annoying and they say that while the US and the USSR never went to war directly, they tried to exhaust one another with proxy wars and so on. I think these are usually also the people who like to say that we are in World War Four now, which makes Mr. Gingrich's article all the more puzzling. I am not going to try to engage these people because their mothers know who they are and that is enough for me.

One thing I wonder now is when World War Two got named. Some time, probably in 1940, someone said okay that war will be called World War One from now on, and this one gets to be World War Two. That must have been easily five times harder than any other naming job. Not only did you have to name this new war WWII and make it stick, but you had to get people to call the Great War something else entirely. Why did people decide to change the name of the Great War? People don't usually just up and call a historical event something different.

And then, what if you had gotten everyone to believe your name change, and Hitler dropped dead of a heart attack and the war was cancelled? I wouldn't want to try naming a war what amounts to This Is the Really Big One, not while it was ongoing. Newt Gingrich apparently does want to. I guess that kind of thing is how he got where he was.

I have a hard time seeing how this Israel-Lebanon thing is going to blow up into World War Three. Is Thailand going to make its entrance at some point? Will it enter on the side of Israel or Lebanon? Spain will stay uninvolved as always, but what about Portugal? Maybe it would be better to call this war Regional War A Million.

Or maybe Newt Gingrich thinks this war is like the Cold War AKA World War Three One. Shame on you Mr. Gingrich. Your mother knows who you are.