James Baker will soon be on his way back to the Middle East, this time to talk to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Various reports suggest that the Americans want Syria to give up the money Saddam buried away in Syria before the Iraq war, perhaps as much as $3 billion. But the US also wants to squeeze Syria for its continuing facilitation of the movement of Muslim jihadists into Iraq to join the fight against the U.S.  As always in the Middle East, however, there are mixed signals in the air.

Assad recently granted an interview to the New York Times, He presented the gullible journalists (who have learned from Tom Friedman how to drink the milk served at the feet of ruthless murdering Arab leaders), with his offer to make peace with Israel. This kind of pablum was enough to get Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, on a plane to Damascus on average once every two months during Clinton's first term in office. 

So too, there are stories in the Israeli press that Syrian envoys have actually been speaking to Israeli envoys abroad.  Israel, seeming to put the lie to the seriousness it attaches to such 'peace offerings,' announced this week, that it plans to increase the number of Israelis living on the former Syrian controlled Golan Heights by a third.

This announcement, which was roundly criticized as 'not constructive' by the mainstream American press, may have been the same tactic embodied in the American decision recently to announce the countries which could participate on bids for contacts in Iraq at the same time as Baker was flying to the countries which were excluded from the bidding, and asking for debt relief. This American President seems to be following a policy of showing the stick first, and then asking for concessions, rather than begging for relief as a supplicant.

There are also reports today that the investigation into the murder of three American diplomats in Gaza in 2003 has been stymied by the refusal of Palestinian Authority security forces to assist in the investigation. The Israeli paper Maariv reports that there is much anger over this in the White House, and that if the trail finally does lead to Arafat, this incident,  when added to the string of other murders of Americans (in which he has collaborated over 30 years), could be the final straw for him.

The recent humiliation of the Egyptian foreign minister on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, has led to a chorus of calls in Egypt for writing off the Palestinians and their self destructive leadership, once and for all. If the Americans were to allow Israel to take a final step against Arafat, a good time to do it would be after Egypt, the leading state in the Arab world, had decided to wash its hands of this venomous individual.

Of course, reports of Arafat's imminent demise have appeared before, and often, and he has managed to outlast every other Arab world leader, and many American Presidents.

Caroline Glick warns that Israel seems ready to make some positive gestures to Assad, during this period of vulnerability for the Syrian leader. I think she has exaggerated fears on this front.  When Israel and Syria last met, most of the time the Syrians refused to speak with Israelis directly and insisted on American interlocutors. Many times in the past the Syrians would not even sit in the same room as Israelis. For 55 years Syria has established its raison d'etre and its credentials in the Arab world by being the consistent, stalwart against Israel, never acknowledging the Zionist presence in Israel as anything more than temporary. I do not expect any about face on this today.

If American pressure on Syria, and our new opening to Iran, can lead to these countries' signaling to Hizbollah to stay quiet, that of course is a good thing for Israel. But all of these regimes and terror groups will have to be dealt with at some point — Hizbollah, the Baathists in  Syria, the Iranian mullahs and their nuclear  program, and the Wahabbist extremists in Saudi Arabia peddling their anti—Western, anti—Semitic filth globally. We can hope for a capitulation by the mullahs or Assad, as occurred in Libya, but  I do not think we can count on it. 

The US has proven adept at operations which accomplish regime change. That message has been delivered twice in two years. Al Qaeda, with its numerous small, not easily identified tentacles around the world, is a tougher foe to eradicate.

But I do not think the American effort ended in Iraq. On the contrary, I think the policy makers in Washington believe, (correctly in my opinion,) that unless the Islamic tiger is domesticated, the world will not have peace. 

Posted by Richard  01 03 04