Outrageous Aggression against Syria

American commandos snuck into Syria yesterday and attacked the village of Sukkariyeh near the Iraqi border, killing eight civilians. (That description has been confirmed by the Syrians; the Americans, as far as I can see, have only confirmed that there was an attack.)

We should be extremely concerned about this as Americans. The United States is acting as an incredibly retrogressive force in the region in terms of peace. France and other European countries have been reaching out to Syria, while we have been maintaining our ridiculous stand-off, despite numerous indications that the Syrians are willing to reach out to us. Whatever its problems, Bashar al-Assad does not have an isolationist regime, and we could have made Syria into a partner for peace and security in Iraq and in Israel/Palestine.

But instead we’ve withdrawan our ambassador (2005), accused Syria of allowing foreign fighters into Iraq (oh right, so they could contribute to their own massive refugee problem!), pointed the finger at them for every single thing that has gone wrong in Lebanon since Rafiq Hariri’s assassination, accused them of being a dictatorship when it suited us and asked them to be more of a dictatorship when it didn’t. We’ve actually encouraged Syria’s worst practices by dropping off rendition-ed prisoners there with the expectation that they would be tortured.

We should be thanking Syria, especially the Syrian people. With 1 million Iraqi refugees, Syria has footed the bill for our stupid war.

And the United States is actually lagging behind Syria’s sworn enemy, Israel, in improving things in the region. The U.S. reportedly urged Israel to attack Syria in addition to Lebanon in 2006 (they wisely refused). This year, Syria and Israel have made important moves toward peace, talking indirectly under Turkish auspices. Washington has all but discouraged the talks, and certainly has done nothing to promote them.

The Bush administration has forged ahead with its idiotic good-versus-evil, non-realist foreign policy. Now Bush has made this devastating final salvo (at least, I hope it’s final), which is going to leave President Obama with a mess to clean up. (Read Joshua Landis’s full and deep analysis on the matter on Syria Comment.)

Let’s hope that Syria can figure out how to forgive us by the time we have a more intelligent president and cabinet. Otherwise we will never fulfill our potential as a broker of peace in the Middle East.

Also extremely worrying is the legal basis that we are citing as an excuse for this. The Time writes:

“But administration officials said Monday that the strikes in Pakistan and Syria were carried out on the basis of a legal argument that has been refined in recent months to justify strikes by troops and by rockets at militants in countries with whom the United States is not at war.”

To me, that equals all-out war (in the form of police action) any time, anywhere that we want. The world is our ghetto and we treat it however we want, apparently.

I want to apologize to my Syrian friends for the actions of the government that represents me. I wholeheartedly oppose this strike. And I hope you all continue to forgive American people for the poor judgement of our elected officials.