WW 10 to WW 20...

Via BlogRush, I found this little gem of satire by John Holbo (CrookedTimber.org) on Max Boot's commentary of Podhoretz' World War IV:

Commentary hosts a symposium on Podhoretz’ World War IV. Their question: “What Kind of War Are We Fighting, And Can We Win It?” I like this bit from Max Boot:

By publishing World War IV, Norman Podhoretz has performed yet another important public service, showing once again why he was such a worthy recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At a time when our political leaders are split over whether we are actually at war with terrorists, when opposition to the war effort in Iraq is growing, and when apathy and complacency appear to be settling in among the public, he lucidly and compellingly explains why we are fighting, how we can prevail, and why we must do so.

My major disagreement with him is pretty minor. It concerns what to call this conflict. Labeling it World War IV assumes that the cold war was World War III, but almost nobody calls it that. Maybe they should, but they don’t. As a matter of purely historical accuracy, moreover, the cold war should be called World War V, since the first world war was really the Seven Years’ War, known in North America as the French and Indian War, while the second was the Napoleonic War. If we follow this logic, we would relabel the 1914-18 conflict World War III and the 1939-45 conflict World War IV, in the same way that George Lucas relabeled his first Star Wars film “Episode IV” after producing three “prequels.”

But merely to advance this argument is to reveal its impracticality.

I think the way to deal with this is to renumber W.W. I as 10 and W.W. II as 20. This will allow for the retroactive insertion of new World Wars, before and between the old ones, if necessary.

Please feel free to discuss the various contributions by the participants.

And some of these comments are indeed hilarious... (here ).