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Saber Rattling Against Syria
Ivan Eland
 According to The New York Times, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that the suicide killers of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, were unknown and said: "We're not laying blame. It needs to be investigated." But the U.S. government began blaming Syria even before an investigation had been completed.
| Syria's been occupying Lebanon and supporting a variety of terrorist organizations, thereby maintaining the conditions for occasional car bombings. There are stories that the boom was authorized by Assad or those very close to him not stories put out by the U.S. government, but stories rattling about in the Muddle East. Suspicion naturally falls on the Syrians, and it takes a willing suspension of disbelief not to think of them as suspects... |
Because the Bush administration suspects Syrian involvement in the murder, it has recalled the U.S. ambassador to Syria and demanded that the Syrians withdraw their troops from Lebanon. Yet even Ariel Sharon, the hawkish prime minister of Syria's archenemy Israel, said that he did not know who was behind the killing.
| We said the same thing. But if your dog bites someone, you're responsible, whether you sicced it on him or not... |
Some Lebanese believe that al Qaeda could have slain Hariri because he is close to the government of Saudi Arabia, which Osama bin Laden despises.
| I'd call them the second line of suspects... |
Who killed the former Lebanese prime minister is important, and Syria may very well have played a role to retaliate for Hariri's opposition to a Syrian military presence in Lebanon. But the Bush administration's reaction to the murder is more significant.
| Every time someone says "the real issue is..." I know they're trying to divert attention from what the issue really, truly is. |
Despite some Syrian help in curbing the flow of anti-U.S. guerrillas and funding for them from Syria into Iraq, the United States has decided to treat the autocratic regime in Damascus as harshly as it has treated other "rogue" states, such as Iran and Iraq.
| That could be because it's regarded as a rogue state. They didn't stay bought. |
The U.S. government's zeal to blame Syria for Hariri's murder parallels its recent saber rattling against Iran. Most likely, the administration recently leaked word of U.S. drone flights and special forces missions into Iranian territory to intimidate the Iranian theocratic government. Unfortunately, the administration has forgotten the post-9/11 Iranian help it received to fight al Qaeda.
| Unfortunately, the writer's overlooking the Iranian involvement in the unrest in Iraq, Iranian control of terror organizations throughout the Muddle East, and the fact that whether the Iranians are working on a nuclear weapon or not, the head of Iranian Hezbollah seems to think they are and he's looking forward to using it. |
It is hypocritical for the administration to punish Syria for assassinating a former Lebanese prime minister (assuming the Syrians did it) when the U.S. led its own campaign to kill leaders of the Iraqi regime, including Saddam Hussein and his two sons.
| Not in the least hypocritical. Hariri was a retired politician in a country not at war, not conducting armed operations against anyone, at least that we know of. Sammy and the boyz were forcibly retired dictators in a country torn by terrorism and guerrilla warfare, who represented a danger to the state. |
It is also duplicitous for the Bush administration to point the finger at Syria for having 14,000 troops in Lebanon, when the United States originally approved that troop presence and when it has 150,000 of its own troops occupying Iraq.
| Not duplicitous at all. We invaded them, we're reconstructing their government, and then we're going to leave. Syria's been treating Lebanon as a colony for a good long time, and showed no signs of ever leaving. Lahoud's a Syrian puppet, just as Hezbollah's an Iranian creature... |
If odious regimes such as Syria are never rewarded for anything positive, they have no incentive to behave better.
| If you've ever trained a dog, it doesn't work if you only use the treats and never use the rolled up newspaper. |
This does not mean holding them in a tight embrace or condoning their abysmal human rights practices. It does mean treating them with a wary pragmatism and not assuming all they do is evil.
| We're not quite at that stage with them. They're an outright dictatorship a hereditary dictatorship, fergawdsake. With the exception of Libya, they're the last remaining overt dictatorship in the Muddle East. Even the Soddies pretend to be a reasonable monarchy. Most everybody else is either democratic on paper or they actually are fairly reasonable monarchies. |
The Bush administration should follow its own lead and imitate its successful policy with Libya.
| Tried that, after Sammy fell. Assad didn't want to do it. He was too afraid of the terror network he'd fostered, and of his own henchmen. |
The administration provided a powerful incentive for Muammar Qaddafi, Libya's despotic strongman who also has been suspected of trying to kill a foreign leader, to give up his nuclear weapons program. It offered Qaddafi an end to international economic isolation in exchange for better behavior. In contrast, Syria's and Iran's efforts at some cooperation with U.S. policies have been shot down in their infancy.
| The overtures were made. They didn't want to play. How many overtures do we have to make? |
In the case of Iran, the regime quit cooperating with the United States when it realized that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan was more or less permanent. Furthermore, President Bush has actually declared that he would not ease relations even if the Iranians gave up their nuclear program.
| It's a paper "democracy," that's actually a theocracy. They run all the Shiite terror networks. How willfully blind should he be? |
Why should those regimes improve their behavior if they feel that they can do nothing right and the goal posts keep moving back when they take a step, however tentative, in a positive direction? As unbelievable as it may seem, considering the Iraqi debacle, the military threats by the Bush administration against Iran and Syria closely resemble the pre-invasion threats the administration made against Iraq.
| I don't find it unbelievable at all. I think we're going to seriously thump one or the other or both, probably some time next year. They're going to be thumped because they run terror networks, and it's our national policy to a.) destroy terror networks and b.) export democracy to give their citizenry a chance to live like human beings. |
A little more sugar and a little less vinegar toward "rogue states" might give these countries an incentive for better behavior.
| They got all the sugar they could handle when Maddy Albright was Secretary of State and Bill Clinton was president. They got negotiations and sweet reason even under Reagan and Bush the Elder. That stuff stopped with 9-11, when we lost our national sense of humor. |
Posted by: Fred 2005-02-22 |
