Sometimes people will argue: The war in Palestine is the last colonial war, no it's Sudan, that's the last colonial war, no no no, Iraq - OK, Iraq and Afghanistan, it's really one war, and it's the last colonial one.

All are correct. World War III is colonialism's last stand, the death agony of imperialism. They are, as Bush likes to (inaccurately) portray the Resistance, desperate.

They are desperate because they are increasingly outnumbered. 15% and falling of the world's population simply cannot sustain colonial rule, in any guise or under any name, over the other 85%.

Colonialism is basically a fancy name for group greed, and neither can 5% of the world's population maintain control over 95% of the world's resources.

But even with all that, World War III would not be possible without religion.

And even then, what we normally think of as religions, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, etc, while they have certainly done their duty as tools to expedite many wars for many years, for a project as big and important as World War III, only one faith tradition will do: Colonialism itself.

Make no mistake, Colonialism is a faith tradition, one of the oldest and most persistent, it was around before the Divine Right of Kings, and it has insinuated itself like an angry little parasite into just about every religion that succeeded it. It has Resolve.

It has even become the de facto religion for millions in the west who claim no other faith. You can no more convince a colonialist that the world is not the property of the west, specifically the US, than you can convince a Christian that Jesus was not crucified or a Muslim that the Angel Gabriel did not visit Mohammed.

Nor should one attempt to, in my opinion. Faith is, well, faith, and if someone believes that Ganesh will remove obstacles, or St Anthony will help them find lost objects, and they derive comfort from that, it is neither productive nor kind to spend one's time and energy on efforts to disabuse them of those notions.

The only time religious beliefs are a problem is when they run up against someone else's; kind of like the "your freedom to extend your fist stops at my window" construct.

If someone believes that their ethnic group is the one God likes best, for example, until and unless they receive a revelation that God has given them permission to kill the people he likes second best, no one is harmed.

Similarly with colonialism, it is not the belief that the world is US property that is the problem, it is the willingness to attempt to enforce this heaven-manifested destiny here on earth that threatens, ironically, Americans even more than the planet's lesser beings.

A couple of weeks ago, there was an article about "widow cleansing" ceremonies in rural Africa, an ancient custom of obliging widows to engage in intimate relations with their late husband's relatives, and/or, in some cases, the village chiefs. Although today such a practice clearly constitutes a grave risk to life and health, as noted in an interview with such a chief, on the subject of HIV infection, he stated he simply did not believe that.

With a few generations of education, his great-great grandson might believe that, if the people in the world with the money and resources to provide that education did not have other priorities, which they do, so that is a moot point, but my point is that HE, the chief, will not be convinced to change his religious faith merely because someone shows him some charts and graphs in a book, or a microscope slide.

What is killing the widows is not simply a matter of ignorance, but a matter of faith.

The whole world likes to joke about the ignorance of Americans, but the fact is that most Americans' faith in the idea of colonialism is not really based in ignorance. Quite a few of them are aware, for example, that Mesopotamia is an older civilization than that of Europe. Many even know that there were city-states, nations, in the Middle East long before Europeans invaded the Americas.

It is simply their belief that those civilizations were inferior to that cobbled together by the rather, um, late adaptors in the frostier lands.

There are some women in the African village who are trying to convince people to make some adaptations in the widow cleansing custom - maybe instead of sleeping with the brother in law living with AIDS, they could jump over a cow. The important thing is to release the husband's spirit from the wife, after all.

Maybe that is the best tactic for those who feel compelled to try to convert American colonialists from their faith.

Maybe America can be the property of the US, but in a spiritual sense, too precious to be appreciated or manifested outside the pure heart of the believer.

To contaminate the principle with the earthly blood of wars, occupations and interference is blasphemy.