Pieces of the Middle East

When I was a teen, I used to love Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat. In each story, the Rat, James Bolivar DiGriz, would allow himself to fall into terrible peril such that there was no doubt that this was the occasion on which his goose was going to get cooked, and then, bam, when you least expected it (or most expected it, depending on how many Stainless Steel Rat books you'd read), the Rat would activate his cunning plan, dashing the bad guys and rescuing himself and his people. To be sure, there were some far-fetched gambits, but my favorite laugh-out-loud deus ex moment involved the Stainless Steel Rat dropping himself some fancy piece of equipment from the future-- and this was years before Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, mind you. Somewhat later, I discovered the somewhat more outrageous and entertaining Retief by Keith Laumer, another morally ambiguous hero whose victories hinged on strategems and plots so brave and yet so ludicrous that no one would ever take them seriously (which is why, in their fictional setting, they worked so well).

Speaking of ridiculous strategems that appear to be paying off, I give you the current Middle East, where a country run by theocrats is seeing the fruits of a crazy plan pay off. See, back in the 90s, the mullahs and political leaders of Iran took a chance on dark horse, a bunch of murderous, fanatical, and (at the risk of redundancy) insane thugs called Hamas. You may remember them because, um, they won 76 out of the 132 seats in the Palestinian parliament recently. That gives them a healthy simple majority in the parliament.

That's not good.

But it gets better... well, for some people. See, in the recent Iraqi parliamentary election, the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shi'ite fundamentalists, won 128 out of the 275 seats available in the recent Iraqi parliamentary election. That puts them 10 votes shy of a simple majority (8, since Sadr's indicated that he'll vote with the UIA), and while the holders of the other seats are not likely to throw their votes in with the UIA, there's also no chance of anyone but the UIA putting together a ruling coalition. The UIA has the implicit support of Al Sistani, Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, who also has ties, at least religiously, to, no points for guessing, Iran.

And that's not good. Well, in a way, it's great, because the insurgency in Iraq seems to be run mostly by Sunnis, so at least the nutjobs who are busy blowing up police stations aren't going to be running the country. But it's not good in that Iran is currently headed by a man whose diplomatic skills make our President sound almost, what's the word, oh, yes, presidential. And now he's got very sympathetic governments in Iraq and modern Palestine.

So, there you have it. We went to war supposedly to bring about democracy in the Middle East, and we ended up with the resurgent (and surprisingly democratic) Persian Empire. Keep an eye out for the sudden appearance of handbaskets and one-way tickets.