Well, probably a few, but not many. How much longer do the Syrian people have to live under despotism? For all the horrifying carnage, at least in neighboring Iraq there is hope.
TigerHawk has a post with links on the latest charade by Bashar & Co. who have evidently shown their new-fonud “cooperation” with the WoT by suddenly “rounding up the usual [1200 insurgent] suspects.” As TigerHawk puts it:
The Associated Press, it seems, has written this story upside down. If Syria has, in fact, been able to arrest more than a thousand insurgents in just the last few weeks, why hasn’t it been doing that for the last two years? Syria, in its braggodocio, has implicitly confessed that it has been able to stop insurgents from crossing the border all along, and effectively admitted the charges against it.
If one of those 1200 isn’t named Basher, then it’s not enough.
Syria has been complicit in the killing of our troops by allowing Islamic murderers transit across their territory. Syria by its actions have proven themselves our enemies and should have to pay a heavy price. Start with air strikes against military installations and escalate from there. They have to believe there will be retribution for their actions. They have a large Kurdish population that the Baathist regime have been murdering and torturing for years, lets arm them at the very least and set up no fly zones to protect them. We have young men and women getting killed by these fascist thugs, lets wipe them out.
Roger:
The true sign of Syrian help would be if he turned the prisoners over to Iraq. Just as Arafat would round up terrorists to show his good faith and then of course they would be released when he needed them to blow up Israeli innocents.It also reminds me of the occasional efforts of Castro at loosening the restrictions on free speech that were always followed up by a return to repression when the PR benifits had done their work. These actions are for the press so they can pretend that they have abandoned their fascist ways.The sad fact is that the left often buys these absurd propaganda ploys and swallows them whole.
Syria was only able to arrest those “insurgents” because they wandered over the border by mistake looking for pieces of Zarqawi…
If we had a news media we might be able to hope to see the conditions in the Syrian prisons. Perhaps we could learn something about the correct confinement procedures for terrorist scum.
The first comment is laugh-out-loud funny, even at 6:15 in the morning, in no small part because it does appear to capture the burden of proof that the chattering classes pose on the United States.
Colin Powell seemed too wimpy when it came to confronting Bashar Assadís government. Whatever, we can now be confident that Secretary of State Rice will unrelentingly push the Syrians to the wall. This domino should fall before the end of the year. The Baathist thugs wonít even put up a fight, but will instead opt to leave the country.
Yes, it’s hard to imagine living someplace controlled by a corrupt single party government, being subjected daily to the risk of random violence by agents of the state.
But enough about Los Angeles…
Ron – “Syria has been complicit in the killing of our troops by allowing Islamic murderers transit across their territory”
Virtually every day somewhere in the US someone is raped or murdered by illegal aliens. So Mexico and the US government are equally complicit in the killing American citizens. Surely this is more important than anything Syria is doing half a world away?
Kevin P – “The true sign of Syrian help would be if he turned the prisoners over to Iraq.”
Similarly the Mexican government protects its criminal citizens from extradition to the US.
David Thomson – “Colin Powell seemed too wimpy when it came to confronting Bashar Assadís government”
Sort of like George W Bush confronting Vicente Fox.
I guess I’m just another non-American scratching my head trying to figure out how you draw up your list of priorities.
I think North Korea is more depressing.
But Syria is only a degree less depressing.
coisty:
You will get no argument from me regarding the immigration policy of the US. It is tragically retarded and both political parties have ignored it it and are more interested in trying to use it as a weapon against the other party rather then solve the problem.But I think your comparison of Mexico and Syria is a little strained.
The main purpose of Fox wanting an open border is economic.depending on your political outlook you can say ther is no difference but I find Syria funding Terrorists and letting them use Syria as sanctuary is more like war rather then economic irresponsibility.Fox keeping criminals on his side of the border has more to do with the Death penalty and national pride. This is not an endorsement of Fox.I just don’t think his intention is to impose a fascist form of government over the region.
As far as priorities it is simplistic to say that we should fix the border problems first, and them worry about the middle east.What we do in the middle east does not stop us from enacting a sane immigration policy. What is stopping us from fixing immigration is political stupidity and laziness.If I used your argument then we should have fixed our race relations attrocity in the 40′s before we considered getting into that mess in Europe.
If you want to talk about immigration and think I am going to defend President Bush’s policy you will have to find someone else because I think his solution sucks,even though I happily voted for him. Immigration wasn’t the reason. And the dems are just as stupid, just from a different direction.
Kevin P:
Although I personally think the border issue with Mexico is far more important than what’s happening in Iraq/Syria I’m glad you are concerned about the border as well. You make some valid points. What I can’t understand though is the apparent lack of concern from so many politically aware Americans about the border issue. I suppose what frustrates me is the way so many blogs focus on Middle East politics with apparently very little concern for the US itself. I mean, there’s not much point in fighting overseas for the US if you are going to come back to a community dominated by Mexicans.
Coisty:
In the area’s that are most impacted by the immigration this is a huge topic. What we have now is a queer system that claims that we don’t have an open border but in reality we do. We end up getting none of the benifits of choosing one or the other while retaining all the bad qualities of both. Both parties claim that they don’t want an open border but the Republicans wink at the industries that hire them and the Dems want to give the illegals all the benifits of citizenship and still claim that they want to controll the borders. And the people do not want to install any type of uniform I.D. that is eventually going to be required to get a handle on the problem. And of course everyone involved is either called a racist, a tool of industry, or a destroyer of civil rights.
In other words, it is a serious problem that gets everyone angry and that hasn’t seen a suggestion from any major leader that doesn’t have gapping holes in it because they don’t want to piss off one group or another. One of the reasons this country is great is because of immigration and the constant infusion of energy and ideas that it brings. I do not want to change that. But the idea that we can have immigration laws and ignore them, that we can have a huge group of people who are breaking the law and are subject to prosecution but there is no rhyme or reason to who gets nailed and who doesn’t,all of this produces confusion, anger and political cowardice. The good illegals get blamed for the bad and the bad are given the same benifits as the good. Anarchy reigns and it is not pretty.