Yesterday's massive car bombing of former (and probably would have been again) Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri has incurred our wrath against the Syrian government, which has maintained a large troop presence in Lebanon for 15 years now, and thus calls the shots there.
Syria is also generally assumed to be the breeding/staging ground for many, if not most, if the terrorists imported for the Iraqi insurgency. Of course, thanks to a lot of pissed-off and vengeful Iraqis, and the still-missing high-octane explosives from al Qaqaa (remember that one?), they don't really need to import much in the way of weapons or terrorists.
Conventional wisdom has it right now that our military forces are simply spread way too thin to do much more than try to hold Iraq down at the moment. But conventional wisdom has had a terrible track record with this gang. They look at Iraq as a staging base for spreading democracy throughout the region -- albeit, probably a democracy where women are third-class citizens and anything mildly amusing is strictly haram. Basically an Iranian adjunct. In other words, not a democracy.
So this not-democracy may spread to Syria, which is by all accounts a dismal tyranny just begging for an attitude adjustment; or to Iran, which is by all accounts a dismal tyranny just begging for an attitude adjustment. We did not build 14 permanent bases in Iraq for shits and giggles. The problem is, we no longer have the international cred to just step in adjust attitudes at will; we used that up in the current folly. Nor, of course, do we have true just cause. Any and all attempts to curry favor with the UN by bringing in yet more useless satellite photos are doomed, and we know it. So if we insist on embarking on this fool's crusade, we do it alone.
The Euros and the Asian bloc are watching us carefully on this, to see which way we will expand, and when. Russia and especially China know that they are gradually being contained and encircled, and China has used its flush-with-cash position to respond in kind, snapping up oil contracts in Sudan, Venezuela, and even Canada. Canada. Iran, in addition to its oil reserves and capital (which enable it to do things like switch its reserve currency to euros, away from the still-devaluing dollar), has natural gas reserves which China has shown interest in.
So, between the economic weapons which China is already poised to use if necessary, and the fact that the world (especially our allies) sees us as aggressive and spread thin, this is an ever-more dangerous game we play. Before the start of the current conflict, you had seemingly smart guys like Steven Den Beste insisting that we didn't just have two-theater capability, but as many as eight. (Den Beste, bless his pointy little head, was at least honest enough to acknowledge that in such an extreme instance, fully four or five theaters would be engaged at the nuclear-missile level, which is just a fantasy of annihilation.)
The real game to watch right now is the tactical, though the overall strategery bears scrutiny as well. A draft would be political suicide, and as everyone knows, we're still spread thin and worn out in Iraq. So that leaves bombing, as we wrote several weeks back. Damascus is now a third player in the Tehran/Pyongyang "Rebuild Your City Overnight!" sweepstakes.
And guaranteed, they will lie and distract on this, right up to the initial bombing run or tactical missile strike. And every faithful lapdog in the MSM/SCLM will immediately heel.
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