February 16, 2005
Best Friends
People let me tell you 'bout my best friend, he's a warm-hearted martyr who'll love me till the end...
Syria and Iran have announced they've formed a 'common front' in their regional dealings with certain nameless countries that invaded Afganistan and Iraq. This is also known in foreign policy circles as a "twofer" - and is the equivalent of the last two nerdy kids to get picked for dodgeball in PE class forming a 'common front' just before getting their asses handed to them by the other kids.
Syria and Iran, the two biggest sponsors of terror in the world, seem to have simply semi-formalized their mutual interests in supporting anti-Israeli and anti-Western terror, sponsoring and fometing unrest in newly democratic Iraq, and in mutual surivival of autocratic regimes.
Syria has managed to raise it's profile in the area recently, to the point of even getting France to agree with the United States on stronger UN condemnation of Syrian meddling in Lebanon. Syria maintains that it's forces there are there for stability, and that Lebanon must merely ask for them to depart, and they would "happily" do so. Of course, that's what former Lebanese PM al-Hariri did, and so the Syrians promptly blew him up. Well that can't be, as Syria rejected the notion they support terror. "Who, me, support terror?"
With the US withdrawing it's ambassador - considered a big deal among effete diplomatic circles - the stakes are rising in the region between the United States and Syria. With their longstanding support of terrorists in Lebanon, their occupation, their tacit support of insurgent Baathists in Iraq (remember, Assad is a Baathist as well), the United States is devloping a casus belli against Syria. Hence, Syria and Iran are drawn into each others arms, considering nobody else in the region will have them....
They should give this arrangement a catchy name, like "Tripartite Pact" or something.
Posted by MEC2 at February 16, 2005 07:25 PM