Who was behind the push to destabilize Syria? People like Yossi Klein Halevi who wrote in the Los Angeles Times April 15, 2003:
Next, Turn the Screws on Syria
The anti-terror effort must go on. Pressure all the jihadist regimes.
JERUSALEM — Though Syria was conspicuously omitted from President Bush’s “axis of evil,” the regime of Bashar Assad has now replaced Saddam Hussein as the Arab world’s leading supporter of terrorism and stockpiler of weapons of mass destruction.
Syria is the only Arab country that actively backed Hussein, reportedly encouraging suicide bombers to cross into Iraq, sheltering Iraqi war fugitives and possibly storing nonconventional weapons for Hussein.
By focusing on those provocations, the Bush administration is correcting a serious flaw in its war against terrorism. The region’s most vicious terrorist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, maintain operational centers in Damascus. As one administration insider put it, any taxi driver in the Syrian capital knows the address of half a dozen terrorist groups.
Worse, Syria arms and protects the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. Until Sept. 11, Hezbollah held the world record in the number of Americans killed through terrorism. In two suicide bombings in the 1980s, Hezbollah murdered 260 American soldiers stationed in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. No terror organization maintains greater global reach than Hezbollah, whose cells and fund-raising network extend to six continents. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage recently noted that Hezbollah “may be the [terrorists’] A-team, while Al Qaeda may be actually the B-team.”
Syria’s support for Hezbollah endangers the entire Middle East. Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah has reportedly placed up to 10,000 Iranian-supplied missiles along the Israeli border. Those missiles, capable of reaching every town and industrial center in the Galilee, were delivered through the Syrian army, which controls Lebanon. If another regional Arab-Israeli war occurs, the probable trigger won’t be Palestinian terrorism but Hezbollah’s missiles.
It may well be in Israel’s interest to have a destabilized Syria and a destabilized Iraq, but it sure is not in America’s interests or Europe’s interests.
