'It may turn out to be a war to remake the world.”(American Conservative)

January 16, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative



Syria In Their Sights

The neocons plan their next “cakewalk.”


by Robert Dreyfuss


It’s happening again. It all sounds depressingly familiar, and it is. The Bush administration accuses the leader of a major Arab country of supporting terrorism and harboring weapons of mass destruction. The stable of neoconservative pundits begins beating the drums of war. American forces begin massing on the country’s border, amid ominous talk of cross-border attacks. Top U.S. officials warn that American patience with the country’s leader is running out, and the United States imposes economic sanctions unilaterally. There are threats about taking the whole thing to the United Nations Security Council. And, in Washington, an exile leader with questionable credentials begins making the rounds of official Washington and finds doors springing open at the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and at Elizabeth Cheney’s shop at the State Department.

This time it is Syria. The pressure is on, and it will likely get a lot worse very soon. On Dec. 15, the second installment of the report by a UN team investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri is delivered. The first report, released in October, implicated several members of President Bashar Assad’s family in the Hariri murder, though without hard evidence. It would be wrong, however, to see the Bush administration’s campaign against Syria only through the lens of the Hariri case. Like the attack on Iraq, it is a longstanding vendetta.

Three years ago, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was widely viewed as the first chapter of a region-wide strategy to redraw the entire map of the Middle East. After Iraq, Syria and Iran would be the next targets, after which the oil-rich states of the Arabian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, would follow. It was a policy driven by neoconservatives in and out of the Bush administration, and they didn’t exactly make an effort to keep it secret. In April 2003, in an article in The American Prospect entitled “Just the Beginning,” I wrote, “Those who think that U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle spreading beyond Iraq’s borders, are likely to be mistaken.” The article quoted various neocon strategists who sought precisely that. Among them was Michael Ledeen, the arch-Machiavellian and Iran-Contra manipulator-in-chief, who argued from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute: “I think we’re going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether we want to or not. As soon as we land in Iraq, we’re going to face the whole terrorist network. It may turn out to be a war to remake the world.”

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_01_16/cover.html

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_01_16/cover.html

They created a desert, and called it 'peace'.

POX AMERICANA!

Which will we attack next Syria or Iran, or maybe both.
Only those close to the bu$h regime know.

He is likely to do something desperate to get those numbers up in the next few months. It may not work this time. A lot of Americans are on to him -- a lot more than were on to him before the Iraq invasion.

that if Bush won that the cause of conservatism would be set back several generations. They seem to be on track so far.

And then, ironically, they almost all died in it.

Too bad today's chickenhawks don't actually fight in the wars they espouse.

of oil and we have alienated every country from whom we might purchase oil. We are screwed.