WWIII...what if?

Do I mean what if some crazy, disgruntled politician pushes the red button? No, I actually mean to consider the possibility that we're already experiencing WWIII. Dispel the notion of storming beaches, confetti filled homecomings, the one evil enemy and turn your attention instead to the minimizing of our world and the maximizing of our every day decisions on it.
Consider our economy, which hopefully you already have. The blunders from our economic downturn are not just sore points here, but all over the world. Despite a crumbling infrastructure and an arrogant police aura, we still hold sway over much in the world. Also consider our military presence all over the world. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" from 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Oh, but that's not even the half of it. The report omits any bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Yeah, we don't have any bases in Iraq and Afghanistan...this aptly named arc of instability is peppered with our camo and hum-v's. Andy Hoehn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, came up with this arc of instability as a response to Bush's war on terror. The arc runs from the Andean region of South America through North Africa and then sweeps across the Middle East to the Philippines and Indonesia. Ironically enough, that's also where the largest oil reserves in the world run...what a coincidence! Starting to get a little twist in your stomach that feels like bad corporations and old hummus? Well, how bout this: the Pentagon also fails to include any bases that are sublet to corporate entities, such as in Kosovo, the site of Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root, "a global engineering, construction and services company." They also don't mention the Japanese bases, or the British ones that have been disguised as RAF bases. Hmmm, why not include all of these? If I know about 'em, I'm sure the Pentagon does. Although, they can't even tell whether or not a real plane hit the building on 9/11 so maybe their intel is a little shaky.
And speaking of shaky intel, here's another nod to a global meltdown. General Patraeus's first act as reigning general over the mid-eastern cluster fuck is to employ 10,000 "soldiers" as part of an Afghani militia to fight Al-Qaeda and those opposed to the US/NATO occupation. Good idea - let's fight some more.
Apparently Hamid Karzai, the well dressed puppet, wasn't too happy about us bullying him into submission...but what is he gonna do about it? Karzai's spokesman commented on our flexing of muscles, saying "We don't want a short-term objective to endanger a long-term objective for security."
But c'mon man, we excel at short-term solutions! We don't think further than however long it takes Bush to complete a coherent sentence. Where's the fun in sitting down and organizing a proper plan - that's so boring! That's like what they did in the other world wars...so pasé.
So, as we drill, shoot, bomb, dig, spend, occupy and lie, this world is reeling accordingly. Every day we spend occupying foreign countries, we make another enemy. It may take another 6 billion or so days to have the whole world against us, but we're moving along pretty good. This war is fought on all levels: economic, psychological, and physical. We bash and batter any chance we get. From torture chambers in Abu Ghraib and GT, to the oil fields in the middle east, to the bases around the world, to wall street, we are perpetually engaged in warfare. The only problem is that unlike other world wars, the people don't seem to notice. We continue on with our reality shows and our day-to-day as if the only worry was who's gonna win American Idol. Wake the fuck up, my fellow Americans. We are at war. I'm not trying to scare you, I'm trying to get you to scare yourself, scare yourself into educating yourself.
As the British military historian, Corelli Barnett said, "Rather than kicking down front doors and barging into ancient and complex societies with simple nostrums of 'freedom and democracy,' we need tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a profound understanding of the people and cultures we are dealing with -- an understanding up till now entirely lacking in the top-level policy-makers in Washington, especially in the Pentagon."
Our officials are lacking, and that's our fault. The buck stops with us, because we are the people they're talking about in a governement for the people, by the people and of the people.
Do something.