You've made an interesting observation here. We've talked rather volubly this past half-century about "proxy wars," in which great powers have done battle with one another through the exertions of lesser powers, because the great powers are simply too powerful to risk a confrontation. But we've seldom noted that a proxy war must also have proxy victims.

Israel has been our proxy in the Middle East for at least forty years. She's absorbed a sobering amount of death and damage. Now that it appears that the Big Red Balloon has finally gone up, she deserves for her bigger brother to come to her aid.

There will be costs, of course. But our moment is upon us. Nor will any other power step into the breach in our place, for there are no other powers willing and able to deal with the cesspit the Middle East has become.

My hope is that Israel does the dirty job of breaking Syria (which it could certainly accomplish) and then the US steps in, plays "good cop," and helps put the pieces back together again.

With elections of course, which means that Assad's gang will be out, since he's from a small minority group.

I wish we would join Israel as the "bad cop" and encourage and support Israel openly to attack Syria. The time for "dancing with the wolves" is about over...We should test the alliance of Syria with Iran. Make Iran put-up or shut-up in defense of Syria. One thing we need to be very careful of is if we do in Assad in Syria, we must make sure what replaces him isn't worse (elections may, or may not do this - see last elections by the Palestinians).

Some people (I don't mean you) are now claiming rather gleefully that the concept of using democracy as a weapon in the WOT is now, because of the Palestinians, proved unworkable, and we can go back to....well, they never quite say what.

But the Palestinians are a very odd situation. Syria is much more normal, with the mass of the population oprressed by a small ruling gang, as in Iraq. I doubt elections in Syria would result in governments that wanted yet more war or isolation.

And the P's reportedly voted for Hamas mostly because of it's reputation for not being corrupt. (And, for that matter, Amadinejad ran as an economic reformer, not as a sabre-rattler).

And if, as I believe, we are trying to change nations behaviors, than I'd say playing good cop/bad cop is just another weapon in the war.

using democracy as a weapon in the WOT is now, because of the Palestinians, proved unworkable

...which is a foolish argument. I think it was on this blog that I read someone observing that when you have free elections, those elections have consequences. The southern states were perfectly free to elect secessionist delegates to their conventions in 1860 and 1861, but they had to live with the consequences of those decisions when the war came. It's not a bug in the democratic software - it's a feature. When the people have no say in their own government, neither do they have responsibility for its behavior. Ideally, it's self-correcting - make poor choices, and you'll learn to make better ones in the future.

And for the rest of the world, the election of Hamas was a superbly clarifying event. We now know where the problem lies, and can begin to address it. How do we do that? Hell if I know...but we know that appeasing some Palestinian elite is just beating our heads against the wall (as if we didn't already know that).

Excellent point Ethan - very well said.

And the same could be said of Iraq (now addressing John's fisking of Wright). Had the US "forced transparency" on Saddam, as Wright suggests as an alternative to regime change, the Iraqi people would bear no responsibility for their future.

Thus we could have it Wright's way - containment; status quo for the Iraqi people; sit around and wait for the force of history to change things - or we could have it Bush's way with the Iraqi people practicing democracy, learning what works and what doesn't, and working toward long-term solutions.