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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (93308)	4/13/2003 9:26:10 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

You could be right, it probably depends on how confident he is of the result and costs. If they believe their own triumphalist rhetoric, they go in before the election. Hard to argue with 80% approval ratings. The Party Line today, is that Regime Change for the rest of the Dominoes, will not require Force (just the Threat of Force). When this doesn't happen (the Syrians have been at war with Israel since 1948 and lost every battle, yet show no sign of yielding), then it'll be necessary to let the world know our threats are credible. But the build-up to war may be just as effective in creating a "rally round the flag" effect, as the actual war. So, the Syrians are now going to be put in the same double-bind that worked so well in Iraq: If they give to us their Iraqi WMD and war criminals, they are guilty. If they don't hand them over, they are guilty. Only by proving a negative (proving they don't have WMD), can they establish innocence. Can you prove you don't have a suitcase Bomb, provided to you by Al Queda? Even after your house, car, workplace, and the houses of all your relatives and friends have been searched, there is always another place you could be hiding it.

To: JohnM who wrote (93308)	4/13/2003 11:53:23 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

My guess is that it's before. My guess is that it is never. There is no doubt that the rhetoric towards Syria (and Iran) will be dialed up considerably in the coming months but I think we will see a dramatic change in the behaviour of the regimes in that part of the world. If you look at it from the point of view of the rulers of these various regimes over the last thirty years, what has been the price of condoning/performing various anti-American activities? With the exception of Quadaffi the answer has been that hasnt been much of a price. That calculation has now changed. What exactly does Assad gain from harboring Iraqi fugitives or funding terrorists? There might be a small domestic gain in that he can be shown as being strong against the Americans/Israelis. This was fine as long as there wasnt much of a chance of a negative blowback. Now that there is a >0 chance of the US performing another "regime change", I think Assad will think twice about his actions. This is not to say that we arent going to see a considerable negative reaction from the populaces of these countries. Perhaps we will have ended up creating more terrorists....but I think, as with Quadaffi, we are going to see it get very quiet in the capitals of some of these countries. A sense of ones own mortality can serve as a pretty dramatic wake up call.... Slacker