Oh, he’ll totally listen to THEM: Apparently, European politicians are telling Bashar al-Assad not to attack Israel if the West attacks Syria. I’m sure he’ll give them as much consideration as he did the people he launched sarin-filled shells at.
Speaking of attacking Israel for no reason: The JPost has an editorial on that very topic. This time, Israel isn’t going to lie back and think of England while the bombs fall. This time, if Syria fires at Israel, Israel is going to fire back. Hard. That’s one of the things that pissed me off more than anything in the first Iraq war. Saddam Hussein got away with firing missiles at Israel as a response to being attacked by the U.S. and its allies. The Patriot missiles were utterly useless, but the Arabs managed to cow George Bush into thinking they’d break from the coalition (and we didn’t need them at all, the Saudi pilots did absolutely NOTHING in the war and took credit for downing planes that the American fighters destroyed). And Israelis died.
On the night of 17/18 January, 1991, Coalition air forces attacked Iraq. In response, Iraq fired salvos of ground-to-ground missiles into Israel. Over a period of more than 1 month, approximately 38 Iraqi versions of Scud missiles fell (33 El Hussein missiles and 5 El Tijara missiles) in 19 missile attacks. These missiles mainly hit the greater Tel Aviv region and Haifa, although western Samaria and the Dimona area were also hit by missiles. Directly, these attacks caused 2 civilian deaths, although indirectly, they caused the following casualties: 4 heart attacks, 7 deaths as a result of incorrect use of biological/chemical warfare kits, 208 injured, 225 cases of unnecessary injection of atropine. Damage to general property consisted of 1,302 houses, 6142 apartments, 23 public buildings, 200 shops and 50 cars.
Not this time. Of course, Assad knows how strong Israel is. Some analysts think there’s no way he’s going to attack Israel, or have Hezbullah do it for him. (That’s a premium link; I just caught a summary on an RSS feed.) Here’s a Lebanese paper saying that Israel will not come under attack. And here’s Barry Rubin, showing why Obama’s attack on Syria is absolutely worthless.
[Snort]: Yeah, the Syrians are going to use kamikaze pilot tactics against any Western attack. Because their air force is so modern and up to date. They need to stop watching reruns of WWII movies.