Destroying the Baathists in Syria is a lovely idea, OJ. It would also cripple Hizbollah (sp) in Lebanon. But who will provide the occupation forces? Israelis would never be accepted by Syrians, our troops are already overcommited in Iraq, and I don't trust the Turks based on their performance to date.

Mr. Rothman;

Why worry about it? It's not our problem. Let the Caliphascists fight it out amongst themselves. Repeat as necessary.

So now the war du jour is Syria. Opportune moment, I don't think so. I must admit as a military strategist, you keep our enemies off balance. Everybody else also. You give shock and awe a whole new meaning.

David: Hopefully we have learned our lesson from Iraq--there wouldn't need to be a long occupation. Syria is mostly Sunni, but Assad and cronies are not (as in Iraq, where a Shiite majority was oppressed by Sunni). So we'd just decapitate the regime and hand it over to some representative group almost immediately.

brian:

Bingo! No occupation is necessary for a people you're liberating.

The Israelis can have a perfectly nice little war with Syria without having to occupy the place. (As could we.) In fact, they'd be stupid (as would we) to try to occupy the place.

Much more likely would be a swift hammering of Baby Doc Assad's armored and artillery brigades (led off with the utter destruction--again--of Syria's air force and anti-aircraft capability).

Punish them hard and see what happens. Junior ain't the old man.

Syria is just one little push short of an implosion, like Lebanon. The ruling group is made up of Alawites, a minority within the country. The majority Sunnis treated them like dirt under the Ottomans, but the French used the Alawites as a local ally, and placed them in charge as their catspaw in the region. There are also Christian and Druze populations. The economy is in tatters, and there is no Soviet Sugar Daddy.

If Israel, the US and Russia get together to fight terror, it is highly likely that Lebanon, which has been illegally occupied by Syria for three decades, will move up the list. It is a center for terrorists, both Hezbollah and Chechens looking for places to train.

I'm waiting for Israel to say "enough is enough", march Arafat out into the compound yard and put a bullet through his head.

BTW, how did it become, all of a sudden, that you are somehow responsible for rebuilding a country that you've just beat in battle? I'm not a history expert, but hasn't it always been either taking the vanquished country over, or walking away and saying "...and don't try it again..." over your shoulder on the way out?

OTOH, I'm thinking that we could be near the tipping point.

* taking & killing 20 +/- Napalese in Iraq.
* taking 2 French hostages, in Iraq.
* 2 bus bombs in Israel
* car bomb near Moscow
* 2 Russian airliners bombed
* 400 Russian schoolchildren taken hostage
* etc. etc. etc.

Sooner or later, one or more Western country is going to come to the realization that the current plan isn't working.

ray,

Putin is an ardent Russian nationalist and probably is well past any 'tipping point.' It would not surprise me if Putin were to capture the leader of the Chechen terrorists, and put him in a wooden cage so that the families of the victims of Chechen terrorism could beat him with sticks. (See Catherine the Great, Cossack Revolt)

Chirac is a dirtbag. He is on the Saudi payroll even more deeply than Old Bush was and is. Just as he has virtually established an 'Open Season, No Bag Limit' on French Jews so long as the murderers are Muslim, he is perfectly content to let non-Jewish Frenchmen get killed so long as he keeps piling up the bucks, Euros, francs, or whatever. The problem is that most of the political class there, the Enarques, are just as slimy, if not worse.