Abstract

Is Syria Next?

This article discusses the potential for U.S. military involvement in Syria. Shortly after September 11, 2001, the government received an extraordinary gift of hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, crucial data on the activities of radical Islamist cells throughout the Middle East and Europe and intelligence about future terrorist plans. These dossiers did not come from Israel or Saudi Arabia, whose kingdom appeared more concerned at the time with securing safe passage for members of the bin Laden family living in the United States, but -- as Seymour Hersh revealed in the July 28 "New Yorker" -- from Syria. It began last year, when the "Axis of Evil" was expanded to include Syria, largely because Syria -- a member of the 1991 coalition against Saddam Hussein -- refused to support a pre-emptive war against Iraq. And it has culminated in the Syria Accountability Act, approved 33 to 2 by a House committee on Oct. 8. The committee's vote came on the heels of Bush's endorsement of an Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian training camp outside Damascus, Israel's first assault on Syrian territory since 1974. In an eerie replay of the buildup to the war on Iraq, the demonization of Syria has swelled to a chorus in Washington, whose members include not only Republicans but pro-Israel Democrats like Tom Lantos, the senior Democrat on the House committee that passed the act.