Assad's strategic choice led Syria into Lebanon backed by the Arab consensus, the U.S. backing and a grudgingly Israeli green light, which positioned him into a bloody collision course with the Lebanese pan-Arab and leftist allies of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was then condemned by the U.S. and Israel as "the" international "terrorist" organization, at a time when Osama bin Laden was a U.S. ally and Hizbollah and Hamas were not yet born.
Assad's choice also indulged Syria into a diplomatic honey moon with the U.S. at a time of a bipolar world system, when the former Soviet Union (USSR) was at the helm of the other side of the cold war divide, paved the way for Syrian - Israeli peace talks, and even led Syria to join the U.S.-led military coalition that drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait in 1991, where Syrian and U.S. soldiers fought shoulder-to-shoulder.
However it was a one way U.S. ticket that brought Syria neither closer to peace nor security. More than thirty years were lost for nothing on betting on the U.S. "good will" and "good offices" that were not forthcoming.
The Syrian Golan Heights remained occupied by Israel. The Syrian regime remained targeted for change by U.S. ruling neoconservatives. Syria remained sanctioned as a state sponsoring "terrorism." U.S. remained weighing in heavily on Syria to succumb to the dictates of the Israeli occupying power for peace as well as the U.S.-Israeli re-mapping plans for the Middle East.
That is the "status quo ante" that Secretary Condoleezza Rice failed to grasp when she refused to "freeze" the status quo ante on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Syria also has repeatedly warned against preserving the status quo ante.
How could any Syrian leadership sit idle watching the geo-military and geo-political bases of its national security undermined to bring the Israeli hostile occupying power to the doorsteps of its metropolitan? How could any country tolerate such an existential threat!
The United States and Israel are contemplating a NATO-led international force at Syria's doorsteps, and to bring about a pro-U.S. or a puppet regime in Beirut.
Israeli bombardment of Lebanon is driving hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee the atrocities of the Israeli midwife of the "new" sovereign and democratic Lebanon from the west into Syria, which is hardly coping with the ongoing flow of thousands of Iraqi refugees fleeing the birth horrors of another democratic regime that was midwifed by the US-led invasion of its eastern neighbour, in addition to slightly less than half a million Palestinian refugees the country is hosting since the creation of the state of Israel forced them out in 1948.
Syria, however, is strongly holding on to its strategic option of peace and negotiations. The Syrian - Israeli front has for decades remained the only "silent" front, more silent than even both fronts of Jordan and Egypt, the only Arab countries to sign peace treaties with Israel.
On Sunday Syria said it was willing to engage in direct talks with the U.S. to help end the fighting in Lebanon within the framework of a broader peace initiative that would include a return of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, swiftly dismissed any talks with Syria, which "doesn't need dialogue to know what they need to do," he told Fox News Sunday, adding: "Syria, along with Iran, is really part of the problem."
"American officials are very good at vernacular descriptions, but lousy at history and political reality in the Middle East," Lebanese journalist Rami G. Khouri wrote in The Daily Star on Monday.
The Bush administration's approach to the "New Middle East" is doomed to failure because it rules out addressing Syrian national strategic concerns and Syria as a regional key player, irrespective of who rules in Damascus.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank. He is the editor of the English language Web site of the Palestine Media Centre (PMC).
Assad's choice also indulged Syria into a diplomatic honey moon with the U.S. at a time of a bipolar world system, when the former Soviet Union (USSR) was at the helm of the other side of the cold war divide, paved the way for Syrian - Israeli peace talks, and even led Syria to join the U.S.-led military coalition that drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait in 1991, where Syrian and U.S. soldiers fought shoulder-to-shoulder.
However it was a one way U.S. ticket that brought Syria neither closer to peace nor security. More than thirty years were lost for nothing on betting on the U.S. "good will" and "good offices" that were not forthcoming.
The Syrian Golan Heights remained occupied by Israel. The Syrian regime remained targeted for change by U.S. ruling neoconservatives. Syria remained sanctioned as a state sponsoring "terrorism." U.S. remained weighing in heavily on Syria to succumb to the dictates of the Israeli occupying power for peace as well as the U.S.-Israeli re-mapping plans for the Middle East.
Syria also has repeatedly warned against preserving the status quo ante.
How could any Syrian leadership sit idle watching the geo-military and geo-political bases of its national security undermined to bring the Israeli hostile occupying power to the doorsteps of its metropolitan? How could any country tolerate such an existential threat!
The United States and Israel are contemplating a NATO-led international force at Syria's doorsteps, and to bring about a pro-U.S. or a puppet regime in Beirut.
Israeli bombardment of Lebanon is driving hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee the atrocities of the Israeli midwife of the "new" sovereign and democratic Lebanon from the west into Syria, which is hardly coping with the ongoing flow of thousands of Iraqi refugees fleeing the birth horrors of another democratic regime that was midwifed by the US-led invasion of its eastern neighbour, in addition to slightly less than half a million Palestinian refugees the country is hosting since the creation of the state of Israel forced them out in 1948.
Syria, however, is strongly holding on to its strategic option of peace and negotiations. The Syrian - Israeli front has for decades remained the only "silent" front, more silent than even both fronts of Jordan and Egypt, the only Arab countries to sign peace treaties with Israel.
On Sunday Syria said it was willing to engage in direct talks with the U.S. to help end the fighting in Lebanon within the framework of a broader peace initiative that would include a return of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, swiftly dismissed any talks with Syria, which "doesn't need dialogue to know what they need to do," he told Fox News Sunday, adding: "Syria, along with Iran, is really part of the problem."
"American officials are very good at vernacular descriptions, but lousy at history and political reality in the Middle East," Lebanese journalist Rami G. Khouri wrote in The Daily Star on Monday.
The Bush administration's approach to the "New Middle East" is doomed to failure because it rules out addressing Syrian national strategic concerns and Syria as a regional key player, irrespective of who rules in Damascus.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank. He is the editor of the English language Web site of the Palestine Media Centre (PMC).
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