Bush Strategy for Syria, Lebanon and IranAs someone who believes that the Bush administration fully intends to implement the neocon plan for regime change in Syria, Iran, and Lebanon in the next couple years, I've watched it and the compliant media build the cases necessary for attack. Just as the disinformation apparatus spun out charges one after one against Iraq (many of them now forgotten, although they produced a climate of fear and hatred and served their psy-war purpose at the time) from 9-11 to March 2003, so they have piled on accusations and insinuations against Syria, Iran and Lebanon's Hizbollah.
These charges collect, growing ever more shrill. Syria stands accused of sponsoring terrorism, having weapons of mass destruction, facilitating foreign fighters' entry into Iraq (to fight other foreign fighters in Iraq), hosting fleeing Iraqi Baathists, providing banking services for the Iraqi insurgents, occupying Lebanon in defiance of the people's will, encouraging Hizbollah attacks on Israel, orchestrating a legal change authorizing an extension of the (Christian pro-Syrian) Lebanese president's term, and (although this is only insinuated) assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri. Every Palestinian suicide-bomber attack on Israelis is laid at the Syrian doorstep. "Axis of Evil" component Iran is also charged with sponsoring terrorism, assisting anti-US forces in Iraq, and funding Hizbollah and Palestinian organizations. In addition it's accused of seeking to produce nuclear weapons. As was case with Iraq, the possible presence in Iran of al-Qaeda forces fleeing Afghanistan in 2001-2 has been represented as active Iranian complicity in al-Qaeda terrorism. Hizbollah, long vilified by the U.S., is repeatedly linked to terrorist actions taken in Israel by Palestinian groups. The list of reasons for regime change lengthens.
But there have been some developments in the last week that some interpret as setbacks for the neocons' Five Year Plan. The administration has agreed to support the Europeans' negotiations with Iran pertaining to the Iranians' nuclear program, and by some accounts to accept Hizbollah's role in Lebanese politics. There is a curious dialectic at work here, but I don't think it fundamentally affects the Plan.
Following the February 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri, the U.S. baselessly implicated Syria, stepping up the pressure on Syria building since the passage of UNSC resolution 1559 last September. Anti-Syrian demonstrations conducted by young well-heeled Lebanese, labeled by the mainstream press the "Cedar Revolution" and compared to the U.S.-financed "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine (but labeled the "Gucci revolution" by critically-minded observers) culminated in a rally of 70,000 March 7 demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops. The U.S. press true to form lauded the "successes" of Bush's Middle East policy, driven supposedly by the heroic impulse to bring "freedom" to benighted Arabs, and pronounced the president's policies vindicated by the happy telegenic faces in Beirut.
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