[Peace-discuss] Bush, the neocons, and Israel's attack on Syria

[patton paul]

 Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neo-Cons Still Hold Sway
by Jim Lobe


ROME - The neo-conservatives in and around the administration of U.S.
President George W. Bush may be on the defensive, but Washington's
reaction to the Israeli attack on Syria Sunday show that they remain in
the driver's seat at the White House. The fact that Bush has himself
refused to in any way criticize the Israeli attack -- the first on Syria
since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war -- shows how far the neo-cons have
succeeded in aligning U.S. policy with the right-wing government in
Israel, a key goal going back to the first Likud government of the late
Menahim Begin and, more recently, since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won
elections in early 2001.

It was the neo-cons who in 1982 defended Israel's invasion of Lebanon and
the bloody siege of Beirut that followed. While then-President Ronald
Reagan went along with the original invasion, his administration never
publicly endorsed the invasion and eventually distanced itself from the
Israelis as the siege wore on.

Bush's explicit embrace of Israel's attack on an alleged Palestinian
training camp in Syria, on the other hand, is a striking departure from
decades of U.S. Middle Eastern diplomacy. Washington even denounced
Israel's 1991 attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq and, unlike the
present, joined with other members of the U.N. Security Council in
condemning it.

Indeed, Bush's statement Monday that he had told Sharon that Israel must
not feel constrained defending the homeland was almost breathtaking in its
implied licence, particularly considering that it was Sharon who not only
led the invasion of Lebanon but is also widely believed to have rolled all
the way to Beirut without Begin's approval. Many experts and historians
believe that Begin was intending a more limited military action and that
Sharon took the initiative to take it much further.

The neo-cons, one of whose core beliefs is that the United States and
Israel confront the same enemies and share the same values, have had Syria
in their sights for quite a long time. Israel, particularly Likud, has
seen Damascus as the most steadfast and potentially the most dangerous of
its Arab antagonists.

Many of the same people both in and out of the administration who have
favored making Syria a primary target in the U.S. war on terrorism signed
a report released four years ago that called explicitly for using military
force to disarm Syria of supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and
end its military presence in Lebanon.

Among the signers of the report, which was released by a pro-Likud
research group called The Middle East Forum (MEF) and the United States
Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL), were Bush's chief deputy on the
Middle East on the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams;
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; Undersecretary of
State for Global Affairs, Paula Dobriansky; and two special consultants
associated with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
who have been working on Mideast policy in the Pentagon and State
Department, respectively, Michael Rubin and David Wurmser.

The signers also included Richard Perle, the powerful former chairman of
the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, his colleague at AEI, former U.N.
ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick; Michael Ledeen, another AEI fellow; Frank
Gaffney, a former Perle aide in the Reagan administration who now heads
the Center for Defense Policy; and David Steinmann, chairman of the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). With the exception of
Kirkpatrick, all of these figures outside the administration played key
roles in urging Bush to go to war in Iraq.

The study, 'Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role?', was
co-authored by MEF president Daniel Pipes, who was just named by Bush to a
post at the U.S. Institute of Peace despite widespread charges that he has
promoted Islamaphobia, and Ziad Abdelnour, who heads the USCFL.

The study stressed that Syrian rule in Lebanon stands in direct opposition
to American ideals, and it rued Washington's habit since its disastrous
withdrawal from Beirut in 1983 of engaging rather than confronting the
regime, the only government on the State Department's terrorism list with
which Washington has full diplomatic relations.

The group urged a policy of confrontation, beginning with tough economic
and diplomatic sanctions that could not be waived by the president, and,
if necessary, military force.

Not surprisingly, the same general provisions have been incorporated into
a new bill that is presently being debated in Congress, and Sharon's
actions, according to many observers, may have been intended in part to
promote the bill's chances of becoming law soon.

Syria was also cited as a target in a public letter to Bush on Sep. 20,
2001 -- just 9 days after the terrorist attacks on New York and the
Pentagon -- by associates of the Project for the New American Century
(PNAC), a think tank closely related to AEI whose director, William
Kristol, also edits the neo-conservative Weekly Standard.

Among other measures, it called for Bush to take military action in
Afghanistan to remove the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda, to remove Saddam
Hussein in Iraq even if the evidence does not link Iraq directly to the
(Sep. 11) attacks; and cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it
puts a stop to all terrorist acts emanating from territory under its
control.

But it also called for the United States to target Hezbollah in Lebanon,
and added, 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.

The letter was signed by 39 prominent right-wingers, almost all of them
neo-conservatives, such as Kristol himself, Perle, Kirkpatrick, and
Gaffney. Israel has been and remains America's staunchest ally against
international terrorism, especially in the Middle East, they wrote. The
United States should fully support our fellow democracy in its fight
against terrorism.

Throughout the Iraq war, many of these same people, as well as their close
associates in the administration, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz and Feith, argued that Syria represented a serious threat to the
United States and its troops in Iraq, at one point asserting that Damascus
was sheltering senior Iraqi leaders and its WMD.

There's got to be a change in Syria, Wolfowitz said in April, adding that
the government was a strange regime, one of extreme ruthlessness. At the
same time, another prominent conservative closely associated with
Wolfowitz and Perle, in particular, former CIA director James Woolsey, was
widely quoted on television as saying that the war on terrorism should be
seen as World War IV that should include as targets fascists of Iraq and
Syria.

Within this context, Sharon's decision to attack Syria appears designed to
shine the spotlight once again on Syria as a key target in the war on
terrorism. Coming at a time when the neo-cons in Washington are on the
defensive over their pre-war claims about the dangers posed by Hussein in
Iraq and the welcome which U.S. troops were supposed to have been accorded
by the Iraqi population, the renewed focus on Syria conveniently changes
the subject.

The fact that Bush appears to have endorsed the attack and justified it
publicly as self-defense also confirms that Bush sees the strategic
relationship with Israel in much the same way as the neo-cons have long
wanted U.S. president to do.

Copyright  2003 Inter Press Service