Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Also on the subject of Syria, please see Dexter Filkins's article in yesterday's New York Times:

...Soldiers on the Syrian side of the border said American soldiers shot dead two cousins, one Iraqi and one Syrian, as they crossed into Iraqi territory about three weeks ago. Since then, they said, two other Syrian civilians have been wounded in separate incidents this month. The Syrians said that American helicopters and planes routinely violate Syrian airspace while patrolling.

The events described at this Syrian border post are the latest in a series of incidents along the frontier. They include the American attack, on June 18, on a convoy suspected of ferrying loyalists of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader....

"The Americans are firing at random, firing at so many people," said Maj. Ali Shamad, the chief of the Syrian border post, who confirmed the deaths of the two villagers and the wounding of two more. "Their planes come over the border every day. The Americans have gone too far."...


Remind you of anything?

Night after night through the summer, fall and winter of 1969 an into the early months of 1970 the eight-engined planes passed west over South Vietnam and on to Cambodia. Peasants were killed -- no one knows how many -- and Communist logistics were somewhat disrupted. To avoid the attacks, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong pushed their sanctuaries and supply bases deeper into the country, and the area that the B-52s bombarded expanded as the year passed. The war spread.

--William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (1979), page 35

Perhaps the comparison is somewhat inexact. Nevertheless, we know how that one turned out.

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