<Syria fears it may be next in line >
Hard to see how Syria could get itself in front of N. Korea, on the List. Maybe, if Hezbollah launches a bunch of rockets from Lebanon into Israel, and Sharon responds by re-occupying S. Lebanon (and bloodying the Syrian Army in the process), and the Syrians responded by funding/supporting/training every guerrilla group in Israeli-occupied Palestine and Lebanon. But even then, the clock is ticking in N. Korea, with that re-opened fuel-rod reprocessing facility. Nobody has said that Syria has a nuclear program, and a nuclear threat trumps a conventional or guerrilla threat every time.
So I doubt Syria gets ahead of N. Korea. And doing Regime Change there, without any help from S. Korea, Japan, or China, will prove an insurmountable problem. We will not invade, and risk the destruction of Seoul. We cannot attack the reprocessing facility, for the same reason. A strategy of putting economic pressure on N. Korea, will only strain our S. Korean alliance, as they are committed to Sunshine. So, that's as far as it goes, Regime Changing stops there, and the rest of the list is wishful thinking by neoCons and Hegemonists. Only two Dominoes, and we had to push both over.
<Syria would find itself hemmed in by U.S. allies on all frontiers: Israel and Jordan to the south, Turkey to the north, and Iraq to the east.>
Jordan is a "wobbly" ally, remember they were against us in Iraq 1. Turkey is run by Islamists. If they won't help us in Iraq, what are the odds they help us in Syria? And in Iraq, well, we will probably find that the Syrian-Iraqi relationship, postwar, is similar to the postwar Iran-Afghan relationship. That is, instead of giving us leverage, we find our ability to hold the ground we've conquered is hindered by hostile neighbors. In Afghanistan today, does our client "government" control more ground than the warlords supported by Iran? |
