Robert Dreyfuss: The Neocons now have Syria in their sights
[Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The American Prospect, The Nation, and Mother Jones.]
It's happening again. It all sounds depressingly familiar, and it is. The Bush administration accuses the leader of a major Arab country of supporting terrorism and harboring weapons of mass destruction. The stable of neoconservative pundits begins beating the drums of war. American forces begin massing on the country's border, amid ominous talk of cross-border attacks.
Top U.S. officials warn that American patience with the country's leader is running out, and the United States imposes economic sanctions unilaterally. There are threats about taking the whole thing to the United Nations Security Council. And, in Washington, an exile leader with questionable credentials begins making the rounds of official Washington and finds doors springing open at the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and at Elizabeth Cheney's shop at the State Department.
This time it is Syria....
... The wider war [with Syria] that the Bush administration seems to be pursuing was telegraphed long ago by the various neocon pundits and prognosticators.
Charles Krauthammer used his Washington Post column in March to suggest that the way to advance the "glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East" is to go after Syria. "This is no time to listen to the voices of tremulousness, indecision, compromise, and fear," he wrote. Instead, the Bush administration's commitment to spreading democracy should take it "through Beirut to Damascus." William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and co-author of The War in Iraq ("The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there"), helpfully suggested some options that the Bush administration is clearly thinking about now. In The Weekly Standard last year, Kristol wrote, "We could bomb Syrian military facilities; we could go across the border in force to stop infiltration; we could occupy the town of Abu Kamal in eastern Syria, a few miles from the border, which seems to be the planning and organizing center for Syrian activities in Iraq; we could covertly help or overtly support the Syrian opposition. ... It's time to get serious about dealing with Syria as part of winning in Iraq, and in the broader Middle East."
All that is consistent with the neocons' long-held view about Syria and the region. For years they've been calling for regime change in Syria, which was a major target in the now infamous paper written a decade ago by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and others entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," prepared as a study-group project for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In it, the authors called for "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper" as a "prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity." Wurmser, a former AEI Middle East specialist, played a key role in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which helped Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld manufacture false intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. Wurmser is currently an aide on Vice President Cheney's national-security staff.
In 1997, the same circle-Perle, Feith, Ledeen, Wurmser, et al.-created the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. The USCFL-like the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which involved the same cast of characters-lobbied hard for the so-called Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (SALSA), which was passed by Congress and signed into law in 2003. It was SALSA that set into motion the Bush administration's current squeeze on Syria, beginning with limited U.S. economic sanctions on Damascus triggered by the act. One of the chief problems with SALSA, which was opposed by just about all of the foreign-policy professionals in the State Department and among Middle East experts, is that it created a slow-motion confrontation with Syria precisely at the moment when the United States most needed Syrian co-operation both in the war against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and in helping to stabilize Iraq. "In Iraq, the two countries we most need the help of are Syria and Iran," says Chas W. Freeman. "We're not trying to involve them. We're trying to up the ante by confronting Syria and Iran."
Wesley Clark, a retired Army general who served as supreme allied commander in Europe, wants to see the United States engage Syria in a diplomatic dialogue.
"The very last thing we need to do is to engage in hot-pursuit raids into Syria," he says.
The fact is, after 2001, Syria worked closely with the United States in tracking down al-Qaeda cells and, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, Syrian intelligence was very helpful. ...
Read entire article at American Conservative
It's happening again. It all sounds depressingly familiar, and it is. The Bush administration accuses the leader of a major Arab country of supporting terrorism and harboring weapons of mass destruction. The stable of neoconservative pundits begins beating the drums of war. American forces begin massing on the country's border, amid ominous talk of cross-border attacks.
Top U.S. officials warn that American patience with the country's leader is running out, and the United States imposes economic sanctions unilaterally. There are threats about taking the whole thing to the United Nations Security Council. And, in Washington, an exile leader with questionable credentials begins making the rounds of official Washington and finds doors springing open at the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and at Elizabeth Cheney's shop at the State Department.
This time it is Syria....
... The wider war [with Syria] that the Bush administration seems to be pursuing was telegraphed long ago by the various neocon pundits and prognosticators.
Charles Krauthammer used his Washington Post column in March to suggest that the way to advance the "glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East" is to go after Syria. "This is no time to listen to the voices of tremulousness, indecision, compromise, and fear," he wrote. Instead, the Bush administration's commitment to spreading democracy should take it "through Beirut to Damascus." William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and co-author of The War in Iraq ("The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there"), helpfully suggested some options that the Bush administration is clearly thinking about now. In The Weekly Standard last year, Kristol wrote, "We could bomb Syrian military facilities; we could go across the border in force to stop infiltration; we could occupy the town of Abu Kamal in eastern Syria, a few miles from the border, which seems to be the planning and organizing center for Syrian activities in Iraq; we could covertly help or overtly support the Syrian opposition. ... It's time to get serious about dealing with Syria as part of winning in Iraq, and in the broader Middle East."
All that is consistent with the neocons' long-held view about Syria and the region. For years they've been calling for regime change in Syria, which was a major target in the now infamous paper written a decade ago by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and others entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," prepared as a study-group project for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In it, the authors called for "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper" as a "prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity." Wurmser, a former AEI Middle East specialist, played a key role in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which helped Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld manufacture false intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. Wurmser is currently an aide on Vice President Cheney's national-security staff.
In 1997, the same circle-Perle, Feith, Ledeen, Wurmser, et al.-created the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. The USCFL-like the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which involved the same cast of characters-lobbied hard for the so-called Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (SALSA), which was passed by Congress and signed into law in 2003. It was SALSA that set into motion the Bush administration's current squeeze on Syria, beginning with limited U.S. economic sanctions on Damascus triggered by the act. One of the chief problems with SALSA, which was opposed by just about all of the foreign-policy professionals in the State Department and among Middle East experts, is that it created a slow-motion confrontation with Syria precisely at the moment when the United States most needed Syrian co-operation both in the war against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and in helping to stabilize Iraq. "In Iraq, the two countries we most need the help of are Syria and Iran," says Chas W. Freeman. "We're not trying to involve them. We're trying to up the ante by confronting Syria and Iran."
Wesley Clark, a retired Army general who served as supreme allied commander in Europe, wants to see the United States engage Syria in a diplomatic dialogue.
"The very last thing we need to do is to engage in hot-pursuit raids into Syria," he says.
The fact is, after 2001, Syria worked closely with the United States in tracking down al-Qaeda cells and, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, Syrian intelligence was very helpful. ...