MR Asks: Yeah, Why Aren't We Bombing Syria?
We read Ann Coulter for a number of reasons. We know that we shouldn't, but we really like stealing her lines - Coulter on Miers: "I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court", Coulter on Katrina: "liberal hysteria always frightens Bush. Instead of poking them through the iron bars of their cages with a stick like a normal person would, Bush soothes them with food pellets and reassuring words", Coulter on academia: "has anything good ever come of a 'teach-in'? Even the promisingly titled
'die-ins' always fail to deliver". Anyway, looking to someone like Coulter to make reasoned arguments misses the point. She is an ideologue and her role is to rally the troops, not to engage in disputation. Nonetheless, at least last month, she pointed out a very interesting non-event:
In addition, I believe we are legally required to be bombing Syria right now... Muslims in Syria torched the Danish Embassy a few weeks ago, burning it to the ground. According to everyone, the Syrian government was behind the attack — the prime minister of Denmark, Condoleezza Rice and White House spokesman Scott McClellan... McClellan said: "We will hold Syria responsible for such violent demonstrations since they do not take place in that country without government knowledge and support."
We are signatories to a treaty that requires us to do more than "hold Syria responsible" for this attack. Syria has staged a state-sponsored attack on our NATO partner on Danish soil, the Danish embassy. According to the terms of the NATO treaty, the United States and most of Europe have an obligation to go to war with Syria.
This seems like a genuinely provocative question. Why wasn't Article V of the NATO pact invoked in response to the Syrian state's de facto attack on the sovereign territory of a NATO ally? It doesn't require the official declaration of hostilities - Article V was invoked after 9/11, if only in a symbolic way because there was no consensus on the degree to which the act could be tied to a recognized nation-state. Why wasn't the same done after the Danish embassy was attacked, if only to underscore the gravity with which the West viewed the attack and to reaffirm that an attack on part of the West is an attack on all of it? We're willing to go as far as to say that the silence regarding Article V represented a rare moment of honesty in international relations - to the degree that the West is fractured in the face of Islamofascism, there's something to be said for not pretending otherwise. Still, you gotta be surprised they didn't at least try to pretend.
In addition, I believe we are legally required to be bombing Syria right now... Muslims in Syria torched the Danish Embassy a few weeks ago, burning it to the ground. According to everyone, the Syrian government was behind the attack — the prime minister of Denmark, Condoleezza Rice and White House spokesman Scott McClellan... McClellan said: "We will hold Syria responsible for such violent demonstrations since they do not take place in that country without government knowledge and support."
We are signatories to a treaty that requires us to do more than "hold Syria responsible" for this attack. Syria has staged a state-sponsored attack on our NATO partner on Danish soil, the Danish embassy. According to the terms of the NATO treaty, the United States and most of Europe have an obligation to go to war with Syria.
This seems like a genuinely provocative question. Why wasn't Article V of the NATO pact invoked in response to the Syrian state's de facto attack on the sovereign territory of a NATO ally? It doesn't require the official declaration of hostilities - Article V was invoked after 9/11, if only in a symbolic way because there was no consensus on the degree to which the act could be tied to a recognized nation-state. Why wasn't the same done after the Danish embassy was attacked, if only to underscore the gravity with which the West viewed the attack and to reaffirm that an attack on part of the West is an attack on all of it? We're willing to go as far as to say that the silence regarding Article V represented a rare moment of honesty in international relations - to the degree that the West is fractured in the face of Islamofascism, there's something to be said for not pretending otherwise. Still, you gotta be surprised they didn't at least try to pretend.
