Raid Syria? Actually, that's a terrible idea.

The implications of the US military strike into Syria are manifold. Counterinsurgency 101 tells you to eliminate all insurgent safe havens, but there will be serious negative consequences that might outweigh playing Al-Qaeda whac-a-mole in Syria.

But first, it is confusing as to who actually ordered the strike into Syria. It would appear that the White House has delegated the responsibility for ordering strikes into insurgent sanctuaries to the military commander of Central Command, David Petraeus.

Wow.

We take from Clausewitz that war is merely the continuation of politics by other means, but is it acceptable to give the Pentagon the ultimately political choice of when to potentially start a war? Clausewitz, and I say a definite no- even though Petraeus is a pretty good guy. And there could also be confusion as to who even ordered this particular attack. This is also a tad worrisome.

Syria is granting insurgents and terrorists safe haven in their countryside, as I discussed in the previous post, and this was getting on Iraq and the US’s nerves. But perhaps who ever thought it would be a good idea to conduct a US raid in Syria was banking on Syria’s response to be similar to Israel’s bombing of their suspected nuclear reactor last fall? (Which was rather muted at the time.) But Israel bombed a remote region that was closed off to the Syrian public, and the US sent ‘copters in the middle of the day near a pretty large town. It is hard to just write that off… It might be a little more expensive in the short run than a quick helicopter trip into Syria, but I would advocate that Iraqi and US forces man the border and we work towards getting the Syrian police to roll up the undesirables that might run amok along the Euphrates. Violations of sovereignty tend to upset people.

Most Syrians desperately would like to be free from Iran’s sphere of influence and rejoin the international community sans sanctions. Anyone who has taken an Iranian-made taxi in Damascus will sympathize. The Syrian government had recently been making overtures towards the west, but this raid is likely to set that back a quite a ways.

Finally, one must wonder what this will do to the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) negotiations back in Baghdad. Iraqis want the US military out of Iraq, and since it is a now a democracy (that’s a good thing, right?), the government needs to respond. The raid into Syria has thrown yet another wrench in the equation. And I’ll bet that it’s a pretty big wrench.

Raid Syria? Sure, why not?

This past summer I backpacked through much of Syria, and the guys at Zeitgeist have asked me to share a few thoughts on the recent raid by US forces into Syria.

First, a little back ground info:

On October 26th, the United States raided a village on the outskirts of the Syrian town of Abu Kamal, which is right on the Iraq border. Four American helicopters entered Syrian airspace in the middle of the afternoon (rather bold, I’d say) and the raid resulted in the death of Abu Ghadiyain, Al-Qaeda's senior coordinator who was operating in Syria. This is the first attack of this nature by US forces into Syria, and Syria’s government was none too pleased, labeling the raid “criminal” and “terrorist aggression.”

Russia, Venezuela, France, China, Iran, North Korea, and a host of other nations condemned the attack with varying degrees of strong language. Iraqi government officials also voiced extreme displeasure with the raid- the said they didn’t sign up to have Americans invading other countries’ sovereign territory while using Iraq as their base.

I took a whirlwind road trip of eastern Syria this summer, which included a visit to the town of Abu Kamal. After sugaring up my mukhabarat (secret police) escort that had been following me as I visited archeological sites on the Euphrates, I was able to visit the border crossing, pictured below, on the condition that I didn’t take any pictures.

The Syrian border guards were pleasant, and they said at most only five or six cars cross from Syria into Iraq each day. This, however, is not the impression you get from Abu Kamal, which was bustling with the types of commerce that you would expect in a remote town that Iraqi insurgents use as a safe haven. From the plethora of desert-going American SUVs, many with Iraqi license plates (and some with Texas DMV stickers still on their windows), it was clear that more than a half dozen vehicles were crossing from Syria into Iraq near Abu Kamal.

So indeed, there are Iraqi insurgents in Syria. And some even have Osama Bin Laden bumper stickers. Abu Kamal, and the whole of eastern Syria, is a pretty wild place. In counter-insurgency lingo it could be classified as a “sanctuary.”

But what to do about it? And what are the implications from this raid? More to follow in a few minutes...