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Jonathan Friendly is the national editor of , which owns the weekly Jewish newspapers in Detroit and Atlanta. He is a former journalism professor at the University of Michigan and a former reporter and editor at The New York Times.
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By Jonathan Friendly
October 20, 2003
Congress and the White House are moving to enact the Syria Accountability Act, which is intended, it says, "to halt Syrian support for terrorism, end its occupation of Lebanon, stop its development of weapons of mass destruction, cease its illegal importation of Iraqi oil, and hold Syria accountable for its role in the Middle East, and for other purposes."
Now doesn't that all sound grand.
The only problem is that the act probably won't accomplish a tiny fraction of its goals, unless the real goal is to spare a bunch of Washington politicians -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- further embarrassment about having given Syria a pass for more than two decades as it spread its tentacles of terror into Lebanon and other convenient places for attacking Israel.
In the last 13 years, Congress has repeatedly lamented Syria's refusal to be a nice guy, passing at least seven bills and resolutions on the topic. In the meantime, two Syrian presidents -- Hafez Assad and now his son Bashar -- have unsurprisingly refused to remove their 20,000 soldiers from southern Lebanon. The troops help Damascus run an almost puppet government in Beirut and provide cover for the Hizbullah terrorists who are happy to fire missiles into both military and civilian targets in Israel.
That most of the missiles don't do a lot of damage now doesn't mean that the strikes aren't good training for the day when other missiles might be used to carry to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv the chemical and biological warheads that Assad's generals are trying to build.
Somehow, words don't hurt Syria.
The weak-kneed State Department listed Syria among states that sponsor terror by, among other things, funneling money and supplies from Iran to the groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas that send suicide bombers to blow themselves up in restaurants in Haifa. The listing didn't stop Syria from earning $1.2 billion a year on oil it illegally allowed to flow through a pipeline from Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
What did Syria do when the United Nations concluded it had no legitimate claim to the positions that Israel holds in the border area known as Sheeba Farm? It continued to attack the positions and then took its seat on the UN Security Council where it could score more points in the Arab world by sponsoring a resolution condemning Israel's fully justified assault on a terrorist training base north of Damascus.
So don't expect Syria to be shaking in its boots if the Congress passes and President George W. Bush signs a law letting him impose very limited sanctions on the country. The record says it will take a great deal more than that to get Damascus to give up its love affair with terrorism.
You could ask the folks in the camp that Israel targeted which they feared more: the Syria Accountability Act or the Israeli Air Force.
Views expressed by the author do not
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