The Rats That Roared

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About to show my age again.  I do not know the words to (or title of) a single Taylor Swift song, but I keep thinking about Leonard Wibberley’s comic 1955 novel, The Mouse That Roared, later turned into a pretty funny movie in which the inimitable Peter Sellers played three roles (only two of them male).  The book is about the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, which, in an attempt to solve its economic problems (a California winery is mass-producing a knock-off of its only export, a premium wine), declares war on the United States, hoping and expecting to lose quickly and thus secure for itself the benefits of post-war American largesse, in the form of foreign aid, as in the cases of Germany and Japan.  With the “rebuilding” money, Grand Fenwick will be able to get back on its feet.  So war is declared.

Unfortunately, a State Department functionary misplaces the declaration of war, and Grand Fenwick’s expeditionary invasion force, clad in armor and armed with longbows, arrives in New York unannounced and unexpected during a nuclear war drill that has shuttered the city.  It marches down the empty streets, into a fortuitously open vault, and proceeds to stumble upon and capture a previously undisclosed doomsday weapon with the power to destroy the world.  With the weapon under Grand Fenwick’s control, the US must sue for peace. Winning the war creates a whole new set of problems.  Chaos ensues.

Which, of course, brings us to Yemen and the Palestinians.  Consider Yemen, a war-torn, ravaged, strife-ridden, sectarian hellhole in which 35 million mostly impoverished people live in relative misery.  It does not take too many minutes of research for the casual inquirer to discover that Yemen, like Grand Fenwick, has economic issues.  One of its former economic mainstays, the kidnapping of foreign visitors, has dried up as visitor volume has decreased, possibly because no tourist in his or her right mind would want to be caught dead–poor word choice– in such an oppressive, unbearable, dangerous quagmire.

A substantial majority of Yemen’s 35 million people are below the poverty line, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day.  Trend lines are not promising.  In 2012, the per capita GDP was $1,307; in 2022 it was $366, an approximate 70% decline.  On the positive side, for the intrepid soul willing to take a chance, opportunities may abound.  The creative entrepreneur will find cheap labor, average wages hovering about a buck an hour.  If you could find something you wanted to buy, you could probably get a decent price.  The Yemeni rial is worth 0.004002 of a United States Dollar.

So why not declare war on the civilized world?  What do you have to lose? In the past hundred years or so, history will tell you, while it may have cost many civilian lives, in the long run, no country ever suffered economically by engaging in war with the United States.  So get a bunch of missiles from Iran, which wants nothing more than to harm the Western world.  Shut down the shipping lanes and make goods significantly more costly, making Russia and China happy.  Inconvenience Israel with ineffective but irritating drone and missile attacks. No one cares about the Jews anyway. Sure, the Americans will do something after a year of goading, and you need to be careful not to find yourself in the Israeli bullseye, but a Grand Fenwickian war may be your best bet.

Do you need a reason?  To capture the approval of the academic lemmings, you must have a cause. The Grand Fenwick model won’t work, because no one is ripping off Yemen’s premium wines. So, how about solidarity with the beleaguered Palestinians? Granted, it’s less compelling than the Grand Fenwick wine rationale.  After all, the per capita GDP of the Palestinians is at least 10 times greater than that of Yemen and the Palestinian literacy rate is over twice the Yemeni rate.  Donor money pours into Palestine–the United Arab Emirates is good for over $800 million annually, the U.S. close to $350 million, the EU close to $150 million.  And that does not include the hundreds of millions the UN spends on supporting and educating the world’s first and only community of perpetual refugees.  Not to mention the UN’s tunnel-building assistance and terrorist employment initiatives.  But using the Palestinians as an excuse for bad behavior is a tried and true method.  Go for it.

And look at the upside.  Haniyeh and Nasrallah were billionaires.  Arafat’s daughter, Zahwa, has an estimated net worth of $8 billion (yes, with a “b”), of which, to be sure, not a single penny could conceivably have derived from Palestinian coffers.  Probably baby-sitting.  The family members of Hamas leaders had seaside villas and lived like princes.  And when the war finally ends, the rebuilding funds that will pour into Gaza and Lebanon will boggle the mind and line the pockets of innumerable undeserving politicians, kingpins, honchos, and criminals.

Who wouldn’t want a piece of that?  Why wouldn’t Yemen want to get into the act?  Sure they have received billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance, which the Houthis, like their compatriots in Hamas, steal as it arrives, but the Palestinians have been on the dole since 1967.  This is a winning strategy. The best way for the Houthis to hit the jackpot is to keep poking a stick in the eyes of the Western powers.  Look how well it worked for Iran.  The Obama/Biden moronic  response to the stick-poking was to keep throwing more and more money at Iran, in the hopes that they would, one day, begin to appreciate our good nature and reciprocate.

Enough of this silliness.  The Mouse That Roared was an amusing diversion about mindless geopolitics and nuclear disarmament.  The Ayatollahs running Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas are a more dangerous breed of rodent.  They can not be defeated by being endlessly rewarded.

Pay attention, Donald Trump.  You want to shut down this nonsense? Stop the flow of money to Iran.  Shut down the shipment of oil from Iran. The restive population, if it receives international encouragement, will bring down the oppressive regime within a year.  Go after the Houthis with more than one-off missile strikes.  Punish them.  Once the money and arms from Iran are cut off, condition any humanitarian aid to Yemen on the rejection of the Houthis.  Let the word go forth: you go to war with the United States at your own peril.  There will be no payoff, no jackpot.

The tide turned in Gaza and Lebanon only when Israel resisted the shackles that had been imposed by the United States and Western sentiment and started fighting to win. The most humanitarian action that the West can take is to win this war and bring it to an end.  Cut off the money.  Impose peace.

These are not roaring mice.  These are feral rats.  All you need to do to end them is stop sustaining them and propping them up.  Just do it.

Who knows?  Maybe then, after decisive victory, a Marshall Plan for the Middle East will be in order. And then let them say that the strategy worked.