WW IV

World War IV has already started.  Wait-- what happened to WW III?  That was the Cold War.  It ended the day the Berlin Wall came down.  Not many shots were fired, but the threat of nuclear exchange haunted everyone.
WW IV is the conflict between religious militants and normal people.  Think of the militants who bombed abortion clinics.  Think of the militants who crashed into the World Trade towers.  It's a Total War in which children and other innocent non-combatants are as much at risk as anyone else, if not actually chosen targets.
I suppose I got into this frame of mind by thinking that WW IV started on 11-9-2001, but before that, militants set off bombs in a great many countries, so when did it all start?  Hmm, the Inquisition counts as a series of attacks by religious militants.  Hmm, there were attacks on Ahkenaten around 1338 B.C.  I guess this is really WW 0, since it goes back so many thousands of years.
Will it ever end?  Since humans are unhappy with explanations of the unknown that do not involve human-like agents, probably not until a successor to homo sapiens has populated the planet.