With the war on Iraq being gradually replaced by the occupation of Iraq, it seems that Syria has come into the sights of the Bush administration as the next adversary to be confronted in its war on terrorism.
This is consistent with the strategic vision of the Project for the New American Century, which declared in its first formal response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 that,
“any war against terrorism must target Hezbollah. We believe the administration should demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for Hezbollah and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism.
-Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism, September 20, 2001
As this excerpt indicates, Iran is also viewed as a threat to be dealt with somewhere down the road, but it has not received nearly as many admonitions from the Bush administration as Iraq’s neighbor to the west. Clearly, the pressure and focus right now is on Syria.
Perhaps it should come as little surprise that the necessity of confronting Syria, possibly with military force, was first articulated some three years ago by the Middle East Forum, a think tank with strong links to the PNAC. Jim Lobe of the Asia Times has the story.
Familiar hawks take aim
By Jim Lobe
April 17, 2003
Many of the same people who led the campaign for war against Iraq signed a report released three years ago that called for using military force to disarm Syria of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to end its military presence in Lebanon.
Among the signers are several senior members of the administration of President George W Bush, including the chief Middle East aide on the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, and Michael Rubin and David Wurmser, senior consultants to both the State Department and the Pentagon on Iraq policy.
Also signing were Richard Perle, the powerful former chairman of the Defense Policy Board; former United Nations ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick; Frank Gaffney, a former Perle aide who heads the Center for Defense Policy; Michael Ledeen, another close Perle collaborator at the American Enterprise Institute; and David Steinmann, chairman of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
The study, “Ending Syria’s Occupation of Lebanon: The US Role“, was co-authored by Daniel Pipes, who has just been nominated by Bush to a post at the US Institute of Peace, and Ziad Abdelnour, who heads a group founded by him called the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL). The study was released by Pipes’ group, the Middle East Forum.
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christopher fenner
i support the people of syria it is a land of peace and they want to keep it that way i as a american citzen fulley support syria and this so called acts of syria haveing carelessness indifferness with our other freinds in the mid east .i have listen to mr imad mustapha he is the deputy ambassador from syria to the usa and i belive what he is trying to tell the american public this so called promiscuous campine by the media to some how cause the american public to hate the syrian people and threaten thear home land i am not going to let this happen i pronounce to let the people of syria live on peace and if the people of syria would like a man from america to make a stand with them you can count on me for support!thank you please support the people of syria
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