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Seventeen Ways to Kill a Rat
By David Glenn Cox
I once visited the Prisoner of War museum at Wright Patterson Air Force base. It was a testament to the abilities of captured men to build and create, with very little in the way of resources plus a great deal of time, to think about things. Among the collection of barracks-made compasses, wire cutters and crystal radio sets, was a maze. The maze was made from tin cans and boards. The tin cans were used like sections of tunnel and it was an amazingly complex rat trap. I thought, why would the Germans allow the prisoners to keep this? The answer was simple, the Germans didn’t like the rats any more than the American prisoners.
Once in the maze, the rat’s fate was sealed; no matter which tunnel it chose, they all led to death. The rat first pushed a tin can section that louvered up something like a garage door to gain entrance, then he pushed through a second door which freed a spring which secured the first section down again so that the rat could not back out. One tunnel held a conventional spring-loaded rat trap while a parallel tunnel held nothing. Taking the safe route brought the rat to two more tunnels from which to choose. One contained spring loaded sewing needles to stab the rat, while the other path was safe. It continued on like this, until finally the rat had had worked it’s way through all of the challenges comprising sixteen modes of certain death. Then he was offered a free meal in a metal tray.
All the rat needed to do was to crawl into a wooden box with a steel floor and begin to eat. This was seventeen, the floor was wired to one pole of an electrical cord and the other pole was wired to the steel tray. In the end it was a test of rat intelligence where the smartest rats refused to take the test. It was the greedy and hungry who either thought themselves smarter or who were too foolish to understand the trap's purpose.
It was the recent suicide bombing in Iran that made my mind wander back to this trap. It is as if many Americans believe that Iran exists in a vacuum. That Iran doesn’t have other problems or rivalries besides the United States and Israel. They pretend that Iran’s leaders stay up late at night planing devilment for the west without ever looking over their own shoulders. The Americans were prisoners of the Germans, but the Germans didn’t like the rats either, so they gladly allowed the Americans to kill the rats.
The US has accused Iran of supplying weapons to Iraq, yet the road across the border goes both ways as Iran has accused the US of supporting nationalist groups in Iran. Iran and Turkey are both fighting Kurdish separatists who are gaining ground in Iraq, fueling the conflict over a free Kurdistan state even further. Iran has claimed that Saudi Arabia has been mistreating Iranian pilgrims on their pilgrimage to Mecca. Last year a top Iranian scientist disappeared on his pilgrimage and has not been heard from since. The Saudis throw up their hands and claim to have no knowledge of his whereabouts.
The Saudis, in return, claim that Iran is supporting Yemeni rebels in an ongoing civil war. The Saudis fear that if Iraq becomes a client state of Iran, or if Iran becomes a nuclear power, that Saudi power in the region will be eclipsed. So the king of Saudi Arabia visits Syria. Syria has long been on the outs with the Saudis because of its ties with Hizbullah, which makes the Saudi's partner, the US, very nervous. But the region has become destabilized like a giant game of global Uno. The Saudis fear a nuclear Iran as much or more than the Israelis.
Pakistan fears the rise of Iran; Iran fears Pakistan will suppress the 20% Shiite population in Pakistan. China fears the radicalizing of the Muslim population on their southern border or the 100 million Muslims inside of their border. India fears Pakistan will become a radicalized Muslim state. The gulf states have hitched their wagon to Saudi Arabia and the United States and fear any change in the power structure as they’ve become merchant states dependant upon peace and prosperity.
The United States has recently opened talks with Iran to settle nuclear issues. The talks are taking place between Russia, France, Iran and the United States. Israel wants Russia to stop arming Iran with its latest anti-aircraft systems. The United States has been working to hedge emerging Russian power. The United States does not want Israel to attack Iran but would prefer that Russia stop selling first-line weapons systems to Iran.
Russia sees a chance to drive a wedge through the Middle East. Just as we wanted to see the Russians fail in Afghanistan, the Russians want to see the US fail in Afghanistan. Not because they hate us, or as George Bush would say they hate our freedom, but because it raises their prestige and lowers ours. It aids their interests and hurts ours. The US was the one who wanted to put missiles in Europe to give the US a first strike nuclear advantage, so it is much too late in the day to blame Russia for playing the same game.
Iran blamed the suicide bombings on the US, but who else could they publicly blame? The US has been called the great Satan every day for the past twenty-five years. They can’t hardly go on the six o’clock news and say that perhaps it was some other great Satan. The Iranians are now in productive talks with the US to make these nuclear issues go away. The Obama administration wants these talks to succeed. If they were to fail, conservatives would scream, “I told you so!” So it would be completely counter-productive for the US to assist them in failing. So who might be responsible for the suicide bombings? Lots of people, lots of people who don’t want to see these talks to succeed.
There is a virtual cast of characters with varying purposes and with varying reasons that would love nothing better than to see Iran incinerated. Each with their own reasons and their own sentiments. Financial, religious, strategic or national interests. And we have wandered into this maze where every wrong turn could mean disaster and where no one knows the way out or even if there is a safe way out.
The complexity of the issues makes the Cuban missile crisis look like a game of checkers. Every checker we push makes one party happy and two parties angry, and there are at least a dozen checkers games going on at once. My sympathies go out to the President and Hilary Clinton for they didn’t have a choice to play the game in the first place and now must try to find a way out when there are, indeed, at least seventeen ways to kill a rat.
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