Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2004, pages 11-12

Special Report

 

Déjà Vu All Over Again? U.S., Israel Escalate Threats Against Syria

 

By Ian Williams

At the end of November, former head of Israeli military intelligence Major-General Shlomo Gazit accused Ariel Sharon of trying to provoke a fight with Syria to provide an excuse for an Israeli attack. Sharon was running an "orchestrated campaign to incite and humiliate Damascus," Gazit said. "It is only going to be a matter of time until the Syrians are unable to hold back and then the big blaze will begin."

However, I fear he has it wrong. With the help of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon, Sharon has gone beyond getting Washington merely to pay for Israel's wars. Since the attack on Iraq in March, it would not be too much to suggest that the Israeli prime minister has now succeeded in getting the U.S. actually to fight Israel's wars. The real fear, then, is that the U.S. itself may attack Syria as well.

An attack on Syria would provide an election-year scapegoat for the failure in Iraq, where the lack of success is certain to be an issue. Recent months have seen a resurgence in the type of accusations made in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion: the missing Iraqi weapons that some hint are hidden in Syria, the missing Hussain, the alleged entry of foreign fighters into Iraq, the alleged support for terrorism. And it is true that Syria is indeed a tyrannical and undemocratic regime, and not only in the particular and peculiar American-Israeli definition of one that is anti-Zionist and not easily manipulable by Washington.

This was of course seized upon by President George W. Bush in his address to the National Endowment for Democracy at the beginning of November, when he expediently forgot all his previous excuses for attacking Iraq and added the promulgation of democracy in the region as his latest one--and singled out Syria as a suitable case for treatment.

A U.S. attack on Syria may seem far-fetched, and indeed irrational. However, just think of how after Sept. 11 Sharon seized the occasion to go after Yasser Arafat by waving the "terrorism" word about. He succeeded in getting U.S. backing, no matter how unlikely or irrational it seemed at the time.

Similarly, before Sept. 11, and even for some time afterward, the attack on Iraq would have been inconceivable to anyone looking for rational American interests involved. However, the devoted core of ideologues around Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney made it possible, in the teeth of resistance by the U.N., Western allies and much of Congress, by manipulating the threat of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and similar bogeys to scare the electorate into a paroxysm of righteous patriotism. They can do it again.

As with Sharon's hatred of Arafat, the Israeli's animus against Syria is deeply theological and personal. Syria's military budget is about a third of Washington's direct military aid to Israel, so the country is even less of a threat than Iraq. Stunted by poor economic growth, the technological gap--already wide in the late Soviet days--is now almost unbridgeable.

However, Syria is the major holdout state in the region and, as a semi-sponsor for Hezbollah, there are some deep personal grudges to repay by the likes of Sharon. Only a few years ago, in 1996, several of the famous neoconservative team now in the Pentagon had drawn up a position paper for then-incoming Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu which proposed getting the U.S. to clean up the region on behalf of Israel: first Iraq, then Syria, then Iran.

The U.S. also has complained about Syrian, and indeed Iranian, sponsorship of "terrorist" organizations like Hezbollah. Although no one except Israel and Washingtonand a few diehard allies define Hezbollah as terrorists, the administration's promiscuous use of the word is geared toward a domestic audience--a strategy that worked very well in the case of Iraq, and is easily transferable to Syria.

Indeed, the groundwork was being prepared even as Baghdad fell, when Rumsfeld accused Syria of harboring Iraqi leaders. "We are getting scraps of intelligence saying that Syria has been cooperative in facilitating the move of the people out of Iraq and into Syria," he inelegantly told a Washington press conference. That followed a week of heavy-handed warnings about arms supplies and volunteers moving across the border.

As the much-sought Iraqi weapons went unfound, Israeli intelligence chief Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser already had told a Knesset committee that "it is possible Iraq transferred missiles and weapons of mass destruction into Syria." While Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, says there is no evidence to substantiate that claim, that assessment is doubtless subject to change if the White House decides it is inconvenient.

Perhaps ironically, Syria was one of the half-dozen states to side with the United States against the establishment of the International Criminal Court--ironically, because, other things being equal, this opposition should have endeared Damascus to Under Secretary of State for Disarmament and International Security John Bolton, whose work in this administration has been almost entirely devoted to sabotaging the court by bullying countries into signing agreements that they will not extradite Americans to the Court.

As we know, however, John Bolton, wearing his disarmament mask, has another self-appointed task: to extend the axis of evil to as many countries as possible on the Neocon enemies list, which to a considerable degree overlaps with Israel's list. Syria, Iran and Libya are, of course, prominent on both.

Soon after the attack on Iraq, Bolton rushed to reassure Arabson the U.S.-financed Arabic-language Radio Sawa that Iraq is indeed just the start of the crusades. "Our evidence is very convincing that since the Security Council suspended sanctions because of Pan Am 103, that the government of Libya has substantially increased its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction," Bolton informed them.

"We are hoping that the elimination of the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussain and the elimination of all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would be important lessons to other countries in the region, particularly Syria, Libya, and Iran," he specified, "that the cost of their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is potentially quite high."

The statement had considerable implications, coming as it did from the man who went to Israel two months earlier to promise Ariel Sharon that "it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards."

Syria, unfortunately, has not helped itself. At one time, its late President Hafez Al-Assad had a deserved reputation as a wily diplomat, a survivor. His son has not lived up to that reputation, however.The elder Assad, under Saudi as much as American pressure, sent troops to join the first Gulf war coalition. In a disastrous miscalculation, his son decided to kiss and make up the bitter intra-Ba'athist feud with Saddam Hussain. Without being too personal, it does, in retrospect, look like a rat jumping on a sinking ship. Syrian connivance in Iraqi oil smuggling was a foolish move which only helped Syria's enemies in Washington and Israel set it up.

Syria also has misspent its time on the U.N. Security Council. It has not engaged with other delegations, continually referring issues back to Damascus, where hard-line positions are tossed off. Or, suddenly, scared of pressures from Washington, Syria abstains on resolutions, then asks to retrospectively endorse them. In the case of Resolution 1511, the Syrians actually voted for a resolution containing a clause that is clearly aimed at themselves!

That clause, calling upon countries to prevent the passage of terrorists through to Iraq, only panders to the myths being propounded by Washington, which prefers to blame foreign "terrorism" for chaos in Iraq rather than its own actions. Syria could have tried to negotiate it out, but either the delegation or Damascus did not notice it.

By the time Syria floated its draft resolution condemning Israel's October air raid it had few if any allies or favors to call upon--even though almost all Security Council members agreed that the Israeli action was illegal, unjustified and, indeed, very dangerous. The U.S. veto implicitly endorsed Ariel Sharon's right to follow in Washington's pre-emptive and unilateralist footsteps--as long as he keeps chanting "terrorism."

There is, of course, no legal justification, nor U.N. mandate, for an attack on Syria, whether by the U.S. or Israel.Having just flouted international law and the U.N. Security Council to go after Iraq, however, with hardly a peep from the rest of the world, it is difficult to see that consideration holding the administration back. At one time, war on Syria would have risked World War III. But, while Putin may bluster, he is not going to stick his nuclear neck out for Russia's former client state.

Can Syria do anything at this late stage? One hesitates to offer advice to President Assad, who clearly is not an entirely free agent in Damascus, with the old guard military and Ba'athists.Among the possibilities, however, would be ratifying the chemical and biological weapons conventions and inviting in U.N. inspectors; offering peace to Israel on the basis of the Mandate boundaries; and the calling of elections in Syria, where the Israeli and American threat, along with a sense of gratitude from the sophisticated Syrian electorate, would probably sweep him in with a comfortable majority.

In the meantime, however, keep an ey on those bellicose TV screens. Be alert for pictures on Fox of Bashar Al-Assad sandwiched between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussain under the rubric of "The War on Terror," and you will see the signposts on the latest Road to Damascus.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations.

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