About that Raid into Syria
27 October 2008 2:53 pm by Taylor Marsh
BY TAYLOR MARSH
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The Bush administration has been busy.
It’s the first time the U.S. has launched an attack inside Syria. Cross-border
incursions into Iraq to kill American soldiers, because the Syrians aren’t minding that border, is the reason given for the strike, but also because of an opportunity, is how it’s being spun.
Time
magazine’s Nicholas Blanford asked all the right questions yesterday:
Given that the U.S. is saying the number of volunteer fighters infiltrating
Iraq from Syria has dwindled significantly in the past 18 months, why was
this action deemed necessary? Does the raid signal a shift in U.S. tactics
in the region? And with just over a week before the U.S. presidential election,
why now?
Very interesting from John Landis
at Syria Comment (via Juan
Cole):
It was probably constructed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and not Cheney’s
office. Evidently there are real issues at the border and Petraeus has been
warning the Syrians that they must do more. His interest in going to Syria
in the fall of 2007 was as much to read Syria the riot act about compliance
as it was to seek intelligence sharing, although that had been a principal
subject of the Sharm al-Shaykh meeting between Mu`alem and Rice in May. Bashar
al-Asad is no mood to give anything to Bush or Rice in the closing months
of their administration.
There’s only one reason to do this raid. The election is one week away. The truth is that the Bush administration isn’t interested in relations with Syria being restored either. This is one way to accomplish that goal and tick everyone off as a bonus. The Syrian’s called it “serious
aggression.”
The
AP and other news agencies, along with Fox,
reported that Abu Ghadiyain, Al Qaeda’s senior coordinator operating in Syria,
was killed in the strike. But it’s not confirmed, so wait on putting that notch
on Bush’s belt. Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, called the action “cowboy
politics.”
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On another front, 20
were killed in South Waziristan, including lead Taliban, by a U.S. missile
strike from a predator drone. The targets of the strike had been responsible
for attacks on U.S. soldiers inside Afghanistan. Eida Khan was one of the men
killed, a notorious fighter known inside and outside of Pakistan. But the focus
of the strike was to attack those responsible for Afghanistan incursions, not
Pakistani Taliban, which is a whole different issue.
Raids, strikes, incursions into a sovereign country to strike at wanted targets, as well as killing civilians, is going to put the whole region on edge. Maybe that’s the point. I wish I wasn’t so cynical about Bush’s foreign policy, but there’s really no reason to trust the president. He’s not earned it, that’s for sure.
