The current buzz is over whether the United States should take down Syria next. In balance we think that is a bad idea, but the argument is close enough to be worth looking at.
The charge sheet against the Assad regime in Syria is long. In the near term, it provided assistance to the outgoing Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Military aid flowed. Islamic militants from other Arab countries, including Syria, crossed the Syria-Iraq border and some remain part of the continuing resistance to complete pacification.
Syria is harboring senior Iraqi regime officials and family members. If Saddam Hussein is still alive, there is a reasonable chance that he is somewhere in Syria. The 1966 Syria-Iraq split within the Baath Party left a bitter residue that meant that Saddam was not attracted by a pre-war exile in Syria, which might have headed off the war. The situation is different now and exile there might be his only option.
Syria maintains thousands of troops in Lebanon, "supervising" the Lebanese government, "overseeing" the drug trade and other criminal activities there. It protects Hezbollah, an Islamic terrorist organization active in Lebanon. Hezbollah used to hold American hostages and is responsible for shelling and other provocations against Israel from Lebanese soil.
Through Hezbollah and the dispute with Israel over the Golan Heights, Syria keeps a troublesome foot in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, making the world pay attention to a country that would not otherwise merit it.
Internally, the Assad regime -- under the late Hafez Assad and now his son Bashar Assad -- has run a mean and tight ship. Syria's human rights record is abominable; its economy is a shambles; and much of its money is spent on security forces to keep the government in power. It's not a regime whose departure anyone would mourn for an instant.
The final piece of the attack-Syria-now argument is that U.S. troops are already in the area and should go ahead and get rid of another horrible Mideast regime while they're at it. The Pentagon undoubtedly has an invasion plan on the shelf.
However, all of that said, Syria is a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council. If there was screaming and yelling in international circles about the Iraq attack, the din would be ear-splitting if the United States now took the war to Syria.
There is also really nothing that Syria is doing that constitutes any kind of direct threat to the United States. Iraq was a stretch. A regime's being odious is not sufficient reason to get rid of it.
Regime change in Syria at this time, although likely to be welcomed secretly in the Middle East as much as Saddam's departure is, would nail into place irrevocably an Arab conviction that the United States is determined to turn that part of the world upside down.
And even though the Assad regime in Syria is thoroughly secular, an assault on it would risk being seen as further reinforcement of the argument that the United States sees itself embarked on a Christian-vs.-Muslim crusade.
Finally, and probably the determining factor, after more than a hundred deaths of U.S. forces, and looking at a tab for the war and reconstruction of Iraq running into the hundreds of billions of dollars in tight economic times, Americans have probably had about enough of war for now. Some of the troops have already turned around and started for home.
The right approach to Syria for now is, take advantage of the thorough fright that the quick victory in Iraq must have given the Syrians, make stiff demands on them that reflect their current deer-in-the-headlights status, and watch closely how responsive they are to those demands. The case for taking them down is strong enough to make it a real option.
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