SYRIA'S HOUR OF TRIUMPH 

Caroline Glick

 Jerusalem Post, July 13, 2009

In an interview with Britain 's Sky News over the weekend, US President Barack Obama was asked whether he is planning to accept Syrian President Bashar Assad's invitation to visit Damascus . The very fact that an American presidential visit to the Syrian capital is on the international agenda demonstrates how radically US foreign policy has shifted.... Obama's response to the Sky News query was instructive. "There are aspects of Syrian behavior that trouble us and we think there is a way that Syria can be much more constructive on a whole host of these issues," he began cautiously.... Then came the zinger: "But as you know, I'm a believer in engagement and my hope is that we can continue to see progress on that front."... In his speech to the Muslim world last month in Cairo , Obama indicated that the US no longer objected to Hizbullah or Hamas as political forces when he said, " America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them." After last month's Lebanese elections in which Hizbullah lost to Sa'ad Hariri's March 14 movement, the administration went a step further. Rather than capitalize on Hizbullah's defeat by strengthening the victorious pro-democracy forces, the White House signaled that it preferred the formation of a unity government with Hizbullah. In a post-election statement, the White House urged the March 14 bloc to "maintain your power through consent." Whereas the US has merely hinted its support for the inclusion of Hizbullah in the next Lebanese government, Europe has embraced the Iranian proxy terror group explicitly. France , Britain and the EU have all met with Hizbullah members since the elections and have enthusiastically thrown their support behind the Iranian proxy's participation in a "unity" government. Saudi Arabia has similarly come out in support of such a government.... Bowing to US, European and Saudi pressure to give Hizbullah in coalition negotiations what it failed to win at the ballot box, Hariri announced shortly after the election that he supports the establishment of a unity government. In so doing, he was forced to accept that the fate of his government now rests in Assad's hands. With each passing day, it is increasingly clear that Syria means to extract a high price from Hariri in exchange for Hizbullah's sought-after participation in his government. Recognizing the trap, Hariri's supporters are calling for him to form a narrow coalition without Hizbullah and its sister parties. But it is hard to imagine that either the US or Europe would accept such an outcome. Were Hariri to form a narrow coalition without Hizbullah, he would expose the lie of Syrian goodwill and noninterference in Lebanese affairs. And were he to expose Syria 's bad faith, he would demonstrate the folly and danger of the US-led carnival of engagement. Since this outcome is unacceptable to both Obama and Sarkozy, who have staked their reputations on appeasing Assad where Bush and Chirac isolated him, Hariri will likely have no choice but to surrender his nation's hard earned independence to the same Syrian regime that killed his father four years ago. With the West now actively assisting Syria in reasserting its hegemony over Lebanon , the one achievement that remains in place is Israel 's successful removal of the threat of Syria 's nuclear program two years ago. But here too, the powerful legacy of that strike is being frittered away in this new era of engagement.... Two years on, due to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's institutional hostility toward Israel and the US 's unwillingness to confront Syria , Damascus has paid no international price for its rogue nuclear program. The absence of a reconstituted Syrian nuclear program after two years shows clearing that military strikes can be a very effective tool in preventing rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Yet rather than internalize this lesson and embrace the deterrent force it provides the West in dealing with Iran and North Korea , the Obama administration has squandered it. By slavishly devoting itself to negotiating with Teheran and Pyongyang , it has removed the West's most effective tool for blocking nuclear proliferation. Israel's strike exposed an inconvenient reality to the West. It showed that the Syrian, Iranian and North Korean programs are part and parcel of the same program. It is impossible to deal with any one of them in isolation. For two years, the US and its allies have ignored this truth, preferring to pretend that these programs are wholly independent entities rather than acknowledge that-evil or not-a trilateral axis of proliferation among Pyongyang, Teheran and Damascus is a going concern. As Pyongyang 's recent nuclear and ballistic tests and Iran 's recent missile tests all show, the West's refusal to countenance reality has not made it go away or become less dangerous. To the contrary, the West's preference for belief in hope and change has made things more dangerous. By ignoring the achievements of the Bush administration's policy of isolating and confronting Syria and denying the significance of its unchanged behavior, Obama and his followers are courting disaster. The consequences of their squandering hard-won gains for regional security, freedom and stability will not be long in coming.