Foreign Policy In Focus | Global Affairs Commentary | New Syria Legislation Shows Neocons Still in Charge

The neoconservatives in and around the administration of President George W. Bush may be on the defensive with respect to the Iraqi occupation, but recent developments in U.S. policy toward Syria show that they remain firmly in control of the foreign policy agenda in the White House.

Two developments in particular are of note. First, Bush's endorsement of Israel's first attack on Syrian territory in 30 years as "self-defense," and then the approval by the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives of the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003. The bill, which has nearly 300 co-sponsors, accuses Syria of sponsoring terrorism, occupying Lebanon, and seeking weapons of mass destruction and requires the President to impose sanctions on Syria until he certifies that Syria has ceased those activities, although some sanctions may be waived on national security grounds. President Bush has indicated he would sign it; similar legislation was introduced in the Senate in May.

The list of charges in the legislation read remarkably like the list used to justify the invasion of Iraq. While most observers agree that war against Syria in the short term is highly unlikely particularly given the fears of Bush's political handlers that a major new military engagement in the Middle East would only deepen the spectacular plunge since last May in the president's approval ratings the recent developments have served to divert media attention away from Iraq, if only for a brief moment, and move Washington closer to confrontation with a state that Israel has long considered its most steadfast regional foe.

The Attack

The fact that Bush has himself refused to criticize the Israeli attack--the first on Syria since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war--shows how far the neocons 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 neocons 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 UN Security Council in condemning it.

Indeed, Bush's statement on October 6th that he had told Sharon that "Israel must not feel constrained defending the homeland" was almost breathtaking in its implied license, 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 carry it much further.

The neocons, 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.

Neocons and the Middle East Forum

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 explicitly called 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 neoconservative 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 UN ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick; Michael Ledeen, another AEI fellow; Frank Gaffney, a former Perle aide in the Reagan administration who now heads the Center for Security 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 currently 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 neoconservative 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 neoconservatives, 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.

Regime Change in Syra

"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 neocons in Washington are on the defensive over their pre-war claims about the dangers posed by Hussein in Iraq and the welcome that 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 neocons have long wanted U.S. president to do.

(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a political analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)

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FPIF Commentary

New Syria Legislation Shows Neocons Still in Charge

The Attack

Neocons and the Middle East Forum

Regime Change in Syra