Islamic militancy could yield WWIII

[Neo]

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Islamic militancy could yield WWIII

* US general compares rise of militant ideologies to rise of fascism in Europe
* Says extremists will develop WMDs if not stopped

CAMBRIDGE: The top US general in the Middle East said on Friday that if the world does not find a way to stem the rise of Islamic militancy, it will face a third world war.

Army Gen John Abizaid compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving Al Qaeda, to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two.

“If we don’t have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we’ll go through World War Three tomorrow,” Abizaid said in a speech titled “The Long War”, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston.

If not stopped, Abizaid said extremists would be allowed to “gain an advantage, to gain a safe haven, to develop weapons of mass destruction, to develop a national place from which to operate. And I think that the dangers associated with that are just too great to comprehend.”

Abizaid said the world faces three major hurdles in stabilising the Middle East region: Easing Arab-Israeli tensions, stemming the spread of militant extremism, and dealing with Iran, which Washington has accused of seeking to develop nuclear bombs. “Where these three problems come together happens to come in a place known as Iraq,” said Abizaid, who earlier in the week warned Congress against seeking a timeline for withdrawing US troops from the country.

“The sacrifice that is necessary to stabilise Iraq, in my view, must be sustained in order for the region itself to become more resilient,” Abizaid said.

Abizaid said the US had underestimated the challenge of preparing Iraq security forces to stabilise the violent country. “We thought we could go from US-led to Iraqi-led without having to pay the price of the transition, in terms of manpower and resources, etc,” Abizaid said. “Now we realise we have to invest heavily in this transition so you can bring them up faster.”

In testimony to congressional committees on Wednesday, Abizaid rejected calls to either boost US troop levels to quell the violence or to start a phased withdrawal from Iraq. He said the level of violence there was “unacceptably high” and said the 140,000 US forces currently deployed there should focus on training Iraqi units.

Lawmakers from both parties criticised Abizaid’s comments as showing the Pentagon had not developed a new, effective plan for the Iraq situation.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\11\19\story_19-11-2006_pg1_1

 

[Cheetah786]

This guy is a has been.he is :toast:

 

[niaz]

Strange, I thought we are in one. There is a global war on terrorism and Pakistan is in the thick of it. It is a different kind of warfare but killing goes on all the same. Instead of a few thousand killed in one go, a few scores are being killed at a time; but the numbers add up. If one were to add all the people who lost their lives since 9/11, it would be quite substantial. Initially WWI was called the 'Great War' the name later changed to WWI. It is possible that global war on terrorism would be renamed as WWIII after 25 years or so.

 

[Thunder]

A world war is when the whole world/ or most of the world is at war. That's when it's world war. Today it's just america against a gruop of people that are spreaded across the world