Coddling Syria

Last year (May 2005) on Rebunk, in a post titled "Giving Us the Rope to Hang Them?" I decried our not taking a tougher stance against Syria:

Whatever window dressing and verbiage and pretense they present to the public, Syria is our enemy. They have acted as our enemy for years. They are probably the single-biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, with their fingers demonstrably in the Hezbollah AND Hamas pies, and with enough links to al Qaeda (admittedly more often sins of omission than commission, which is hardly a rousing defense) to make a reasonable person think that Syria, not Iraq, should have been first on the post-Afghanistan hit list. Syria has provided refuge for Iraq’s murderous Baath party officials. Syria has long advocated wiping Israel off the face of the planet. We've coddled Damascas for too long. Syria is an enemy. Now maybe we can begin treating it as such.

Predictably some people took me to task for averring that we had "coddled Syria" at all, which strikes me as bizarre criticism. Today more than ever my stance toward Syria and our approach to it seem valid. Fortunately, this time I have the backing of Cliff May in the latest Foundation for the Defense of Democracies "Notes & Comments", which even uses the word "coddle.":

In an otherwise sensible op-ed in the Washington Post, [Here] Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, criticizes the Bush administration for not doing more to coddle the Syrian regime: "On the diplomatic front, the United States cannot abandon the field to other nations (not even France!) or the United Nations. Every secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright negotiated with Syria, including those Republican icons George Shultz and James Baker."

But where did negotiating with Syria get us? Did it make Syria any less implacably hostile to us? Did it make them any less savage to their own people? Did it stop their perfidious behavior in Lebanon? No, it did not. The only two successes in U.S. policy towards Syria -- the brief, but fleeting, democratic flourishing in Syria in the aftermath of the Iraq war, and the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in March 2005 -- only came after the United States and her allies abandoned what Churchill called "jaw-jaw."

Obviously there is much room for "jaw jaw" in the contemporary political climate -- a lot more than this administration seems to recognize, to the detriment of the United States, our allies, and global stability, but there are some enemies with whom jaw jaw is simply useless, a shell game or worse destined only to buy time for despots at the expense of everyone else. So let me repeat my assertion from last year: We've coddled Damascas for too long. Syria is an enemy. Now maybe we can begin treating it as such.