Wretchard at Belmont Club directs us to this snippet in Jane's International Security News in January:
According to JID's intelligence sources, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering plans to expand the global war on terrorism with multi-pronged attacks against suspected militant bases in countries such as Lebanon and Somalia. In a week in which Israel launched airstrikes against Hizbullah positions, our regional correspondent reports from Beirut.
Sending US troops into lawless Somalia would not be new, nor is it likely to cause serious diplomatic waves. Covert US forces have periodically infiltrated the country over the past two years to conduct surveillance and even snatch suspects wanted for the November 2002 suicide bomb attacks in Mombasa, Kenya: an incident in which suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists bombed a hotel and mounted an unsuccessful attack on an Israeli airliner with shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
However, sending US special forces into Lebanon - and in particular an area like the Bekaa Valey (which is virtually Syrian territory) and where the bulk of Damascus' military forces in Lebanon are deployed - would be an entirely different matter. Deployment of US forces in the area would almost certainly involve a confrontation with Syrian troops.
That may well prove to be the objective, since the Bush administration is currently stepping up pressure on the Damascus regime in a bid to force it to cut off all support for radical Palestinian groups that have been targeting Israel during the three-year-old intifada. Washington also wants Syria to abandon its weapons of mass destruction and to withdraw all its forces from Lebanon, a virtual satellite since Syria moved in with tacit US support in 1990 as part of a strategy to end Lebanon's civil war.
The US administration has long considered Damascus as a prime candidate for 'regime-change' (along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and possibly even Saudi Arabia). Syria, once a powerhouse of Arab radicalism that could not be ignored, has been seriously weakened, both militarily and politically. Washington may feel that the time is coming to oust Bashir Al-Assad and the ruling generals. Targeting Syria via Lebanon, the only concrete political influence Damascus has to show following decades of radical diplomacy, could prove to be a means to that end.
Recalling our ambassador was a provocation and escalation. It sent a clear message to Damascus, in the wake of the car bomb murder of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri, in which crime the Syrians were no doubt complicit, that our patience with them is near the end. As the Iraqis reach the point where they are able to handle most of their security burden by themselves, American troops will be freed to liberate Lebanon from an unjust, oppressive occupation, and maybe also Syria itself.
Bashir Assad, the Syrian prime thug, has exploited our preoccupations in Iraq for the past year. He knew that as long as we were tied down there we would be ill-disposed toward adventures further abroad. Now circumstances are changing, and the Pentagon may have set its gaze westward of Iraq. Events of the next couple of months will tell.
