The next president is going to pay a heavy diplomatic price for the dramatic escalation of the conflicts in the Middle East, wrote Los Angeles Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
The raid is notable not just because it seems to open a new front in the war on terror but because of its strange timing. For one thing, it comes when Syria has been showing unusual cooperation and willingness to negotiate with the West. Two weeks ago, Syrian President Bashar Assad ordered his government to establish full diplomatic relations with Lebanon, the first step in repairing decades of troubled ties between the two countries. This month, the former US commander in Iraq, army Gen. David H. Petraeus, praised Syria’s cooperation in policing its borders to stop foreign fighters from crossing over, and last month Syria and Washington seemed to be nearing a thaw in their chilly relations when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. That’s over now; on Monday, Muallem called the US attack an act of “criminal and terrorist aggression.”
The raid also comes during extremely sensitive negotiations on a security agreement in Iraq. Opponents of the deal, which calls for US troops to leave the country in 2011, argue that if it’s signed, Iraq would be used as a staging ground for the US to launch attacks on neighboring countries, such as Iran and Syria. Sunday’s incursion will doubtless complicate efforts to produce a new agreement before the current one expires Dec. 31.
Bush, it appears, is conducting yet another experiment in Middle Eastern cowboy diplomacy, with the advantage (for him) that if it all blows up, someone else will have to pick up the pieces.
