Everyone ready for World War 3? Not so fast.

The Korean War brewing is a geographic dispute about an island. It doesn’t bode well for two reasons. One, this is how the Gulf War started. Saddam Hussein believed oil-rich Kuwait was originally part of Iraq, whereas the United States felt oil-rich Kuwait was originally part of the United States.

Two, North Korea saying South Korea started the bomb exchange (they didn’t) recalls the Gulf of Tonkin, where natural phenomena were mistaken for missile fire, resulting in LBJ escalating the Vietnam War.

Of course, Americans are freaking out because of captain crazy, Kim Jong Il and his nuclear weapons. Two people were killed in the attack (which is two too many), and we’re using it as evidence that Il is, in fact, a mad man. Yet when Bush arbitrarily bombed Baghdad in 2003, over 6000 civilians were killed just in the initial invasion, according to the Oxford Research Group. We cheered this offensive. In fact, soldiers painted FDNY and PDNY on the bombs as payback for 9/11, which, sure, Saddam condoned, but didn’t have anything to do with. Neither did the Iraqi civilians, especially the dead ones.

We’re supposed to fear anyone with nuclear weapons or who might be planning to create nuclear weapons. Il, Karzai, Ahmadinejad, Putin — the world is a scary place. Yet we’re trying to back out of START to keep ours, two-faced champions of global peace that we are.

And What is North Korea going to do with their nuclear weapons? Throw them at us?

So much for nothing to fear but fear itself.