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To: Natural Law

No, but this raises the questions as to why would the Syrians want to support Hizbollah?


8 posted on 07/24/2006 12:44:05 PM PDT by nikos1121 (Thank you again Jimmy Carter.)
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To: nikos1121
...why would the Syrians want to support Hizbollah?

The Syrians have had a history of supporting whoever allows them the most leverage in their neighbor. For awhile during the Lebanese civil war it was the Druze - when the New Jersey shelled the Druze command post the commanding Syrian general was killed. Hezbollah has blossomed in the power vacuum in the two decades since then.

People tend to forget that for most of that time Syria wasn't Iran's "prison b!tch" as Mark Steyn put it, but her competitor for influence within the warring tribes of Lebanon. Since the withdrawal of formal Syrian forces after the assassination of Hariri, they've been scrambling to maintain that influence by acting as a conduit for Iranian weapons. That has put young Mr. Assad in a truly unenviable position - he supports Hezbollah or he is overthrown; he gives them too much support and he is overthrown.

What the author is suggesting is that by offering him protection against outside influence he may maintain his precarious hold on power. However, inasmuch as his probable successor would be Moslem Brotherhood and not allied with the Iranians one might argue that that would also reduce Iranian influence. What it would give us instead might be just as radical but less aggressive. So goes the argument. Personally I'm suspending judgment until we see what happens after Israel withdraws.

16 posted on 07/24/2006 1:27:38 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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