World War III.

Paul Harris in The Guardian takes on Republicans and conservative media types who are anxious to dub the wars in the Middle East and Iraq as WWIII. I've been bothered by the hyperbole and I think he sums it up well.

Certainly there is a great deal of trouble in the world. These are dangerous times. But a third world war? Let's be brutal and forget the morality of any conflict. Let's just stick to the numbers. So far in Iraq, US soldiers are dying at the rate of two a day. There has been a total loss of 2,567 (each one a tragedy, just like every Iraqi civilian killed) over three years. Here is the figure for British dead on the first day of the Somme in the First World War. It was 19,240. That was just one day's losses in one battle for just one nation in that conflict.

Let's move to the Second World War. So far in Lebanon (which has prompted most of the now frenzied 'World War Three' references) there have been 413 Lebanese civilian deaths. Here is the figure for Russian civilians killed in Leningrad during the Nazi siege. It is about one million. That was one city's losses in one country.

So, quite frankly, talk of a third world war is not only ignorant. It is offensive to victims of previous wars and those dying now. That is particularly true as those people most desperate to create talk of a third world war are often those least willing to accept the policies needed to fight any new world war. Firstly, that would be a massive rise in taxes to fund a national effort to defeat a global enemy. Secondly, would be a universal draft to provide the manpower (and womenpower too, these days).