Can't keep track of Middle East factions? Try comparing them to American PACs
So wait, you’re telling me that now we’re on the same side of the Islamic State? Last I heard we were committed to wiping them off the face of the earth, and now here we are, united against the Iranians.
I understand we’re not sharing the same foxholes or anything, but it still seems weird. What’s the phrase, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend’s enemy’s enemy’s friend”? Welcome to the Middle East.
Just when you have the Sunnis and the Shiites, and the Kurds and the Armenians figured out, we have the Houthis to contend with. That part of the world comes up with a new, bomb-throwing ethnic group more often than Gillette adds another blade to its razors.
If you’re having trouble figuring out Middle Eastern factions, it might help to think of them in terms of American Super PACS. You would think American Crossroads and Club for Growth would be on the same side, but they bitterly hate each other, but not as much as they hate Americans for Prosperity which has a secret alliance with the American Principles Project to counter the insurgent Montana Hunters and Anglers Leadership Fund.
Twenty-five years ago, when you were allowed to say such things, I wrote that the flow chart of Levantian hatreds was so complex that the U.N. should just build a big fence around the Middle East and let them all figure it out on their own. Of course back then, we would have thought Yemen was some sort of sandwich spread.
Today, we know that this is the worst sort of American imperialistic, nose-in-the-air, scepter waving. But I have seen nothing to think I was wrong. Every time we wade into that neck of the woods we wind up wth a bushel of sand in our pants.
Remember “Mission Accomplished?” Remember the Green Zone, the Minister of Iraqi Information, WMDs and all those great and glorious victories that added up to a loss? For that matter, remember just, like, last week when our chaotic abandonment of Afghanistan made Saigon look like a commencement exercise?
But now, some people are even more paranoid and isolationist than I am. The Washington Post writes “analysts say the assault early Friday, which the Houthis said killed five people, played directly into the hands of a battle-tested militant group.”
So you’re saying the Houthis have us right where they want us. OK, but two weeks ago we would have been saying, “The who?”
A Yemani specialist told the Post the attacks were what the Houthis were “looking for” and it will make them “appear as the boldest regional player when it comes to confronting the international coalition.”
Ah, the old “Thank you sir may I have another” stratagem. I never thought I’d live to see the day when the objective was to be blown up, but still, I think I’ll take the U.S. Navy and lay the points. (A rather poignant and sad commentary noted that the Houthis will be hard to defeat because they don’t own anything that’s worth destroying.)
No question though that the region has changed. Last time I was in the neighborhood you only needed to know three phrases: “How much for a room?” “I’ll have the falafel” and “Please remove your goat from the hallway.”
Today, Dubai puts any American city to shame, the Saudis have bought the American sport of golf and any glorified Rotary Club can order up a few drones and have its own military capable of disrupting international shipping.
Speaking of which, mad props to the cable news reporter who darkly intoned that American consumers might have to pay higher prices due to Mid-East turmoil. Yeah, shame about the massacred Israelis, the slaughtered Palestinians and all, but if American consumers are to be inconvenienced, things have really gone too far.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
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This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Here we are, stepping back into the quagmire in the Middle East
