Last night on IRC I expressed my feeling that it was President Wilson and his policies which led to the UN, and our apparent delusion that it’s enforcing peace in the world by the expedient of wearing cute blue helmets and driving white LandRovers.

And, by the way, he appears to have been the one who came up with the notion (and the terminology) that going to war makes the world “safer for democracy.”

Someone responded, to paraphrase, that the choice was either the UN or WWIII.

It occurred to me this morning, in the shower (all the best inspiration comes in the shower, like that idea about waterproof notepads to keep in the shower to write down the ideas that come in the shower!) that, if that was indeed the choice, we must have selected “C) All of the above.”

It certainly seems to me that this *is* World War III, and we’ve been engaged in it since somewhere near the end of the Cold War, and perhaps as long as since 1945. We, the United States, are the primary aggressors in this war. Our enemy is … well, it depends on your perspective. If you take the Shiny Happy John Ashcroft Is Your Friend view of the world, then the enemy is Evil, Terrorism, and the forces of Anarchy and Darkness. If you take a less enlightened, perhaps more cynical view, the enemy is economic downturns and People Not Like Us. While I’m sure that reality is somewhere between the two poles, I’m feeling particularly cynical of late.

The Cold War, for all of its evil, postponed this alarming “Pax Americana” at least a few years. Although it seemed like a good idea at first, having the US be the world’s conscience is becoming more and more troubling as we seem to have lost our own conscience somewhere back around … um … well, the Wilson administration.