The U.S. strategy of alienating anyone and everyone in the Middle East while trying to build a friendly country took a turn for the weird over the weekend when the military crossed over into Syria, ostensibly to chase down Al Qaeda or to send a warning (free registration required.) From what I’ve been able to put together, the attacks wacked eight people and there are rumors floating around that at least two people were uncerimoniously hauled off.

What we’re left with is sifting through the rubble and the propaganda to find out what exactly happened down there. U.S. public relations folks are doing their standard routing of maintaining everyone killed was, if not another Hitler, at least a Pol Pot. The Syrian’s story is that it was a construction site full of people simply going about their day.

Of course, the multi-headed Hydra of U.S. operations has too many mouths to keep everything straight. Last Friday, Maj. Gen. (Marine) John Kelly, the guy responsible for Anbar province, told U.S. News and World Reports “that Syria has become ‘a sanctuary’ for [Al Qaeda in Iraq."] When asked whether the Syrian border presented a problem for operations in the area, his reponse was, “We don’t go across the border, for sure.”

For your viewing amusement, Anbar is that big ole’ yellow triangle looking thing on the west edge of the map. The big gray smudge along the western border is Syria. To the north of Anbar is the festive Ninawa province, home of Mosul, which is not doing so hot right now, either.

On a side note, and just a quick reminder on how bloody old civilizations in this part of the world are: there’s no “W” sound in Arabic, so whenever you see a “W” what you need to be saying is “V.” (EDIT: See below - there actually is a “W” sound in Arabic. Nevertheless, Ninawa IS the archeologically accepted location of ancient Ninevah - Ah well, Ball Gunner’s can’t be right all the time.) So when you see Ninawa, what you need to be saying is “Nin-eh-vah” as in Nineveh, as in the place in the Bible where Jonah was headed when he decided to skip out and allegedly spent some time in intestinal confinement. So bear it in mind that we’re dealing with places so old that they’re more easily remembered by ancient myth than modern association. And not some sissy “I cannot tell a lie” myth, either, but some good old timey Godly smiting and “you’re going to sit your behind in that fish and think about what you’ve done” sort of mythology.

But fast forward a millenia or seven and things still aren’t making a whole lot of sense. For starters, if the Syria is really serving as a launch pad for beturbaned mustache twiddlers then it’s apparently news to “U.S. Officials,” and surely “officials” must include at least a few military, who recently reported that a whopping 20 people per month were coming across the Syrian border. Now, I haven’t seen the immigration numbers recently, but I’m going out on a limb and saying if the Syria-Iraq border is SO porous that 20 people sneak across per month that we probably should be sending every U.S. Border Patrol agent to Syria for whatever sort of high-speed hardcore training they’re getting out there.

Second, it goes without saying that, absent the commies, Al Qaeda is the best boogeymen we’ve got around. They caught us napping back in 2001 and slugged us so hard that the country’s collective ears are still ringing. But just about everything I’ve read comes to the conclusion that AQI is mostly a rabble-rouser in Iraq, despite the “officials” protestations to the contrary.

Andrew Tilghman’s article in Washington Monthly titled The Myth of AQI was one of the first serious swipes at the notion of AQI running the show. The definitive work is the Congressional Research Service report Al Qaeda in Iraq: Assessment and Outside Links. The CRS states what I’ve long argued, that Iraqis aren’t particularly predisposed to the sort of nutjob Islam proposed by Al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein’s rule, for all its many flaws, was rather secular, meaning all the crazy Wahabbi Islam stuff across the border in Saudi Arabia never made an appearance (largely because fundamental Islam was a threat to the secular dictatorship.) And even before Hussein, Iraq’s rule under the British and the half dozen monarchs and military coups all had a secular flavor. Long story short, trying to introduce the bongo version of Islam that Osama Bin Ladin wants to shoehorn onto the world in Iraq would be like trying to introduce 16th century Puritanism into modern day San Francisco.

The same more or less holds true in Syria. In fact, if anyone has shown the world that it simply does not tolerate Islamic extremism it would be the Syrians. Back in 1982 when the Muslim Brotherhood got uppity and decided to seize the city of Hama, the Syrian government surrounded the city, shelled it into oblivion for three weeks, and by some accounts pumped tge few remaining buildings where the insurgents were hiding full of poison gas. The survivors found in the city were more or less assumed to be sympathizers and tortured or summarily executed. To this day the Hama Massacre is held as the gold standard of how to send a message. To this day, if you’re wondering around Syria and you pipe up with, “I love me some Allah” you’d better follow that with a quick, “But I love me some President-for-life al-Assad even more.” Besides, the ruling duo look more like flashy East Europeans than Islamist theocrats, and Mrs. al-Assad certainly is easy on the Ball Gunner’s eyes.

I’m not saying the Syrians are all sunshine and lollypops. The Syrians have been some of the best funders of Hezbollah for a variety of political reasons. But that’s crazy Islam in someone else’s country. Big difference.

What this brings us back to, is what in the world was the cross border raid all about. The notion that there was some AQI schmuck hiding out in Syria is certainly plausible. But that doesn’t explain the sort of urgency that justifies an international incident. Maj. Gen. Kelly said that Syria is where foreign Al Qaeda fighters are flowing in from, but even the blowhards from the Weekly Standard say that foreign fighters make up only about 10% of AQI. At this point I’m not entirely ready to discount the entire Pentagon having gone crazy or some loco attempt to pull of some Hollywood style snatch and grab.

For all we know at this point someone made the supreme strategic error of giving a Lieutenant the map and now we’re playing cover your backside. But one safe bet, the U.S. can’t possibly hope to pull together an agreement with Iraq if every neighbor on the block, Sunni, Shia and other, is leaning on Iraq to give the the U.S. the boot.

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UPDATE:

Alright, Long War Journal is saying that Al Qaeda leader Abu Ghadiya was the target of the raid. The excitement isn’t catching.

US strike in Syria “decapitated” al Qaeda’s facilitation network

The identity of Ghadiya and several members of his senior staff have been known since February 2008 when the US Treasury identified Ghadiya, his brother, and his two cousins as members of the network. The US Treasury department publicly designated Ghadiya, his brother, Akram Turki Hishan Al Mazidih, and his two cousins, Ghazy Fezza Hishan Al Mazidih and Saddah Jaylut Al Marsumis as senior members of al Qaeda’s foreign facilitation network.

Ghadiya, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al Mazidih, was an Iraqi from Mosul. He was working as an al Qaeda logistics coordinator in Syria since 2004, when he was appointed to the position by Abu Musab al Zarqawi. After Zarqawi’s death, he “took orders directly, or through a deputy” from Abu Ayyub al Masri, al Qaeda’s current leader in Iraq.

A logistics coordinator. So… we just killed a supply sergeant? Not to belittle the effort, the Long War Journal is a credible source and paints this guy as a high level logistics agent. But this seems like a poor target to alienate Syria for. If we push the Syrians to overt support for Al Qaeda then a high level logistics coordinator will be the least of our worries.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Syria has taken an unsurpising move and frozen diplomatic relations with the U.S. The extent of this has yet to be felt, but I’m willing to wager Ball Gunner bucks that Hezbollah leaders are already licking their chops and anticipating a financing increase.