American officials are now confirming that Israel launched an attack on a Syrian convoy transporting sophisticated weaponry into Lebanon. As expected, the Israelis had no comment about the incident. But the squeals of outrage from both Syria and its ally Iran about the attack, as well as their furious threats of retaliation, show that the operation was probably a success. It’s not clear whether the transfer of what was allegedly anti-aircraft equipment to Hezbollah is a sign that the Assad regime is falling or whether the shipment was a payment for the extensive help it has received from both Iran and its Lebanese proxies. But the question of the disposal of the massive arsenal, including chemical weapons, that Assad still possesses raises an a important point about this latest twist in what has become a Syrian civil war.
As that struggle increasingly looks like one between a bloody tyrant and Islamist rebels rather than a democratic alternative, the American decision to lead from behind in Syria rather than to take action earlier when a better result might have been possible is looking even worse than it did a year ago. Though much of the discussion about Israel’s actions has centered on how far it will go to defend its interests, the bottom line here is that, as it has done in the past, the Jewish state is doing the Americans’ dirty work for them in Syria.
The United States has cautioned Syria about its cache of chemical weapons both in terms of their use against insurgents and their possible export to safe havens in either Lebanon or Iran. But when it comes to brass tacks, it is the Israelis and not U.S. forces that are being counted on to act to ensure that those threats have teeth.
The administration has spent the last two years punting on a deteriorating situation in Syria. Initially Obama was reluctant to turn on a dictator that he and his new secretary of state may have thought was a moderate. But eventually he switched and started claiming that Assad’s fall was imminent. Had the West moved swiftly on Syria, as it did in Libya, that might have been true even though such action would have been fraught with risk. But what we have learned is that sometimes inaction can be even more dangerous than interventions.
Syria is a crucial lynchpin in Iran’s strategy for expanding its influence throughout the Middle East. By largely standing aloof from the bloody struggle there, the United States has not only been complicit in the slaughter there but has allowed Tehran to save its ally, which it has propped up with “volunteers” and arms. This has led to a worst-case scenario in which the Assad regime is still holding on while Syria is convulsed in chaos and violence. That not only endangers Israel’s security, but also creates the danger that Assad’s arsenal will either fall into the hands of unsavory insurgents or be given to Hezbollah.
Though Israel will be criticized for having its forces cross an international border, in acting to interdict Syrian arms convoys or to attack chemical weapons stored there, it is doing something that is as much in the interests of the United States as it is their own. At a time when critics continue to attack Israel as a liability for American foreign policy, this attack ought to bring home just how important the strategic alliance with the Jewish state has become.
write in haste. nIf anything, the US should have propped up Assad precisely to avoid another Libya-weapons-everywhere-blowback scenario. nIsrael's bombing of this convoy is NOT the "…attack ought to bring home just how important the strategic alliance with the Jewish state has become." n nIsrael's bombing of this convoy IS more proof of the illegitimacy of the United Nations. What ever happened to that UNSCRes1702 that prohibited Hezbollah from re-arming south of the Litani River? n
The United States has no vital in, interests in Syria. Israel may be doing her own "dirty work" in Syria, but it's of no particular benefit to the U.S. n nIf Assad falls, what follows will be worse, quite likely even for Israel, which is why Israel apparently has stayed out of the Syrian mess.
I'm not convinced that throwing all controls on the proliferation of chemical weapons out the window is in NO ONE's interest but the Jews. Either that or we have to re examine the dangers or non dangers presented by any WMD at all. If we determine that – oh well we were wrong chemical weapons are really not a concern or a worry to us or anyone we're ostensibly an ally of, then fine. Let's say that. We can treat the inevitable mustard gas or Sarin attack on Chicago or Paris as just another ho hum police matter. After all that's more or less what Spain did with the train bombings that killed 200 people. Basically it was no harm no foul. If life is cheap, I'm game.
There's little information to suggest that this bombing had to do with chemical weapons. The most popular version is that some anti-aircraft missiles were being transferred to Lebanon and israel destroyed the convoy. n nThat may make sense for Israel, perhaps, but I don't see why the U.S. should care. To the extent that the chemical weapons in Syria are usable, I suppose it would be good for the US to see them destroyed.
Piss off. You've been outed as a Jew hater. n nWhat makes you think anyone here is the least bit interested in your 'views' ?
Is it to our advantage to have Iran controlling Syria and Lebanon? n nAnd influecing the Shia population of Iraq, Saudi and Kuwait? n nHow do you feel, Grumpy to send our army back to Kuwait or Saudi to fight and die for those moslam oil fields? n nRight in the middle of a Shia Sunni war? n nThese people do not use land mines, they send theiir children onto the battlefield wearing bombs.
In 1967, Israel's preventative strike which wiped out pretty much all of Nasser's air force saved that nascent country from annihilation. n nTo the left, point scoring is all about the resolutions of authority and so called 'international law' but when that 'law' consists of the cooked up UN machinations of totalitarian states, Islamic dreamers of world domination and African despots then it's not Israel but the flimsy fabric of opportunistic alliances at fault. n nThe likes of Obama can chunter until they're blue in the face but he's got his secret service, his armed guards and three thousand miles of clear blue sea between him and those rabid MB inspired savages now chewing their way through the ME. n nFor Israel this is not the semantics of well cloistered Chicago charlatans but a matter of life and death and history tells us of the Marxist/Islamist attitude of aloof indifference to the latter. n nThey'll screech along with their third world compatriots, 'the Jews stole our land'. I've got news for these parasites. Every inch of Islamoville outside that barren oil filled birthplace was stolen. And that includes Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. n nFortunately the mesh of Zionism is holding strong not only within the jewel of the Levant but internationally and those Arab clowns and their enablers may rage and fulminate but a thousand year old dream once brought to existence is not to be as easily removed as these barbarians imagined. n nThe facts of Israel's superiority are self evident. n n It's prosperity, it's technological savvy, it's innovation, it's democratic principles outweigh anything the worshippers of Allah can even think of and thus they descend into an inchoate rage, fulminating and frothing to anyone who will listen about how unfair it all is. n nWhat these slippery merchants of mendacity, apart from the obvious bragging Qaradawi's will not say is that, to them the only fairness of justice is when the whole world is Dar el Islam. n nIn a way, Israel is the grand metaphor of our times. What goes on there is the compressed crystal of current political thought. A precise meeting point of all we have strived for. n nIt is the fulcrum where Western civilisation abuts the Islamists, the jarring grind of tectonic plates with one ever ready to crush the other. n nIn that sense as globalisation eases a steady stream of Muslims westward, we truly are all Israelis.
Great post. Please keep writing.
It never ceases to amaze me, how a group of people almost all of whom have never worn na uniform.let alone seen war close up,constantly on the pages of this reactionary rag pimp for npolicies that would involve us in another mid-east conflict,it is 68 years to the month that I nentered the city of Manila as a member of the 21 st Inf Regt,24 Inf Div. The streets of a city once ncalled the Paris of the Orient lay in ruins,and hundreds of bodies lie rotting under a tropical sun. nIn all those years I can still conjure up the stink,and the memories of what my 21 year old eyes nsaw hsve never left me. We have a President who is determined to go the extra step to avoid na conflict that the American people do not want. Our Democracy will not survive in a continuous nstate of war.Nor for that matter will Israels.If you are so far removed from reality that you think nthat the U.S. needs Israel for its security rather than the other way around,you realy pose a nthreat to that State.