syria day begins
Let's check the CIA world factbook on Syria first, and we see a lot of "Golan Heights" stuff, which should ring a few bells if you've been following the justifications for neo-cons' Iraq campaign, i.e. protecting Israel. The jew brigade seems to be doing just fine on this point, however, since they pretty much whaled on Syria after they invaded during the 6 days' war, and the Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights has been a continuing issue, but not as much as the settlements elsewhere in what is less ambiguously Palestinian territory, and Syria doesn't seem to be able to do much about it. This story from last year (sorry for the heavily biased Pravda link, but you can stop after the first few paragraphs if you'd like) sounds oddly familiar, with Israel giving Syria shit for allowing Hezbollah to use it as a base for attacks on Israel's north.

So what's coming out here is that the only reason we'd get mad at Syria is because they threaten Israel, not because they threaten the US in the slightest (good summary here). This makes a weird sort of sense when you consider that the original Syria story o' the day was about the Syrian minister responding to US charges in a press conference with Dominique de Villepin held to encourage the US to get involved in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's oddly in line with the neo-cons' point of view that the best way to secure peace for Israel is to conquer all their neighbors, but that's probably disingenous to say. Anyway, Powell says we're considering sanctions against Syria, which would be better than war if we hadn't already thought about that last year.

So whassup, Syria? Where are we going with this?
posted by Mike B. at 12:19 PM 0 comments