Syria, like Iraq, was ruled by a Ba'athist minority. The Assads were from the Alawite sect, a Muslim minority, while the majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims. Former President Hafez al Assad and his generals ruled Syria with brutal repression.
Assad, knowing he would soon be dead from cancer, had planned for his first son to take the reins of power, but after his son's assassination, Assad had to switch the line of succession to Bashar, the weaker son and an unlikely leader. Assad instructed his generals to keep Bashar as a figurehead but to run the country in the same brutal fashion from behind the throne.
Even if Assad had not given these instructions, the generals had to maintain their grip lest the Sunni majority rise up and kill them all. (Note! The same thing is happening in Iraq as the Shi'ite majority is fast finding its strength, no doubt urged on by Iran, and will take or already has begun to take revenge against Saddam's brutal dictatorship.)
The Alawite military in Syria had prepared Latakia, a city on the coast of the Mediterranean with the best armaments, as a refuge, just as Saddam had prepared Takrit as his retreat.
Bashar Assad has been greatly influenced by the secretary-general of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a radical Shi'ite Islamist. President Bush has yet to face the reality of the cruelty inherent in Shi'ite Islam.
Watch what happened during the Shi'ites' first religious pilgrimage to Karbala when the participants beat and cut themselves with whips, swords and razors. They even held their babies up to receive the splashes of blood. Watch what happens in Iraq as the Shi'ites build to their full power.
Syria was carved out of the Ottoman Empire by the French in 1920 and it became a republic in 1946. Syria lost the Golan Heights in 1967 to Israel after the Syrians and Egyptians planned and publicized their attack (which Jordan joined) against the Jewish state.
Syria was always Israel's most dedicated enemy but became even more so after its humiliating defeat in the battle for the Golan Heights. Hafez al Assad hated the Jewish state and swore he would maintain a war footing until Israel was destroyed.
Syria was perhaps the leader in establishing a school curriculum that taught Syrian children to hate and kill Jews from kindergarten through university. This same curriculum was instituted by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, resulting in several generations of Muslim children primed to hate and kill Jews.
Saudi Arabia, the Arab Palestinians, Iraq, Iran all followed suit, in effect establishing an irredentist mind-set to hate Jews and to dedicate their mature years to effectively destroy the Jewish nation. Syria, indeed, is a rogue nation no less than those other nations mentioned.
This Bush administration believes that Israel could make sufficient gestures by giving away land won from the Arab nations in six wars of Arab aggression. Then the Arab nations would forgive the Jews for defeating them on the field of battle and forget their humiliations.
It is just plain naive for the president of America but suicidal for Israel to believe in pacification of unremitting enemies via the spurious concept of Land for Peace. There are those nations who already know this and operate on the assumption that, if they can get Israel to cooperate in its own destruction, then the Arabs will settle down.
I see George W. Bush as a decent man, trapped in the tangle of his own government. Regrettably, as the president of the most powerful nation on this planet, he commits others to extinction 'merely' by mistakenly expressing himself in a June 2002 speech in favor of another Arab Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.
With dismay, we observe Bush include a statement of the Saudi Prince Abdullah in his so-called "Road Map," which seems to have originated within the U.S. State Department and been transferred by Tom Friedman to Abdullah. To accept anything the Saudis offer is astonishing, given what we have learned about Saudi Arabia – especially since 9/11, when 15 of the 19 terrorists bombing America were Saudis (four were Egyptian).
This nation, besides being the incubator for Osama bin Laden and most of the 9/11 terrorists, has funded radical Muslim clerics to teach Muslim children in America to hate America.
We know that Syria has been a terrorist nation and has been building chemical and perhaps biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) for over 20 years. Yet there are plans afoot to take Syria off the State Department's list of terrorist nations and then pressure Israel to move off of the Golan Heights.
America expects Israel to trust the signatures of assurance by the so-called "Quartet" (the U.S. State Department, the U.N., the E.U. and Russia) and the "good will" of Syria.
We know that Iran, as a radical Shi'ite nation, has been building WMD – particularly nuclear – and continues to pledge that Islam will be the final religion for the Planet Earth. This is the same goal of Saudi Arabia, through its Wahhabi form of Islam.
As for the mix of Arabs self-dubbed "Palestinians," they will continue to reflect the teachings of Yasser Arafat and the goals of the nations mentioned above to ultimately occupy all of Israel, with Jerusalem as the capital of the new Arab State of Palestine – regardless of any pledge of peace.
Let us hope that President Bush does not end up in the history books along with Pope Pius XII.
President Bush has been informed that Syria was a repository for WMD produced by Iraq and transferred in the mid-1990s. Syria has been a close operational associate of Saddam, now accepting Saddam's war criminals seeking refuge, some coming with hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from their own people.
Perhaps this has been a wake-up call for the president as he takes another look at the Arab nations of Syria, Iran and Egypt with respect to what they are really developing. In addition to Iraq's hidden WMD development programs, each of the above nations has a huge weapons program and extended-range missiles capable of carrying chemical and biological warheads.
That includes even our "almost" ally Egypt, which, with our free aid, has accumulated $48 billion from American taxpayers and bought weapons, in addition to missiles, from North Korea. Israel considers Egypt a great danger and not to be relied upon as a stable peace partner.
Iran's nuclear program has been in progress for years and is quite advanced.
Israel has extended experience in observing these Arab nations developing their weapons programs and expects that they plan to use them. Israel knew long before all others, and now President Bush, the American Congress and the American people have the opportunity to see Arab nations with clarity.
Emanuel Winston is a Middle East analyst and commentator. He may be reached by e-mail at gwinston@interaccess.com
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