Was US Raid on Village in Syria Driven By GOP Political Considerations?
So far, the Pentagon has been relatively silent about the US raid on a village inside Syria only confirming that a raid had occurred
Syrian officials claim that US soldiers transported in four helicopters attacked a civilian construction site and killed eight civilians
Juan Cole at Informed Comment has a brief analysis: "US troops made a raid inside Syrian territory near Iraq, according to Syrian media, which left 8 persons (the Syrians say civilians) dead.
"What is odd is that the Bush administration did not behave that way when the infiltration of fundamentalist vigilantes from the Syrian side was a more significant problem.
"I don't know if this is election politics on Bush's part, an attempt by Bush-Cheney to mire Obama down in a Syria conflict they started.
"Or maybe the secular, Alawi-dominated Baath Party of Syria, always afraid of the Sunni fundamentalists, has grown so terrified of Fatah al-Islam that they gave a secret go-ahead to the US to hit the fundamentalists where they had intelligence on them.
"The ruling clique in Syria, Alawis, are a kind of folk Shiites much despised by Sunni fundamentalists. The feuding between the two has been visible in nearby Lebanon, in the northern port of Tripoli."
"What is odd is that the Bush administration did not behave that way when the infiltration of fundamentalist vigilantes from the Syrian side was a more significant problem.
"I don't know if this is election politics on Bush's part, an attempt by Bush-Cheney to mire Obama down in a Syria conflict they started.
"Or maybe the secular, Alawi-dominated Baath Party of Syria, always afraid of the Sunni fundamentalists, has grown so terrified of Fatah al-Islam that they gave a secret go-ahead to the US to hit the fundamentalists where they had intelligence on them.
"The ruling clique in Syria, Alawis, are a kind of folk Shiites much despised by Sunni fundamentalists. The feuding between the two has been visible in nearby Lebanon, in the northern port of Tripoli."
And more from Cole: "More on the US raid on a house in Syria:
"The LAT wonders if the attack will derail US-Syrian steps toward rapprochement.
"The LAT wonders if the attack will derail US-Syrian steps toward rapprochement.
Syrian officials are complaining that the raid, which left 8 Syrians dead, was 'irrational' and contravened international law. Other Syrian denunciations are given in Arabic by al-Sharq al-Awsat.
Joshua Landis at Syria Comment carries an account from a physician of the killed and wounded that casts doubt on the US military story that the workers killed were part of a logistics operation in support of fundamentalist vigilantes on their way to Iraq.
"Landis speculates that Bushco. figures that it would get a lame duck freebie in attacking Syria now, on the brink of an Obama administration.
'It seems to me more likely that the attack was aimed at making sure that what the administration calls "al-Qaeda in Iraq" did not have the means to mount a spectacular bombing or assassination campaign that would hurt McCain and help Obama. I was told by NGOs when I was in Amman last summer that the Bush administration had for the first time pledged money to help Iraqi refugees, and that US officials had admitted to them that the reason was that the administration wanted the refugee crisis kept off the front pages this fall. Scott McClellan has already told us that the Bushies are in campaign mode 24/7. I'd say that every single thing they are doing, whether raiding Pakistan or raiding Syria, is intended in some way to help the Republican Party in the election, in addition to whatever local military goal the action had.'
Cole also includes a YouTube video of an Aljazeera English report on the raid.
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