Bush invades Syria instead of Iraq

Well? Syria has far more ties to terrorism than Iraq ever did. How about if Bush had invaded Syria instead in 2003?
 

ninebucks

Banned
If you think that the Iraq invasion had anything to do with terrorism...

Personally, I think it was more to do with Iraq's attempt in 2002 to persuade OPEC to switch oil exchanges from the US Dollar to the Euro. Such a move would have seriously damaged the US economy, and the Iraq invasion, IMHO, set out a definite signal to the unfriendly oil-producing regimes the world over that that would not be tolerated.

Invading Syria, (not an OPEC member), would not have sent that signal to Iraq, (or Iran, or Venezuela...), instead, once the occupation got bogged down it would have only emboldened the anti-American voice within OPEC.

In addition, we would see an earlier, and more violent, rise of Hezbollah in the Lebanon. Israel would have to do something... the wider Near Eastern War could turn out to be much more violent than OTL Iraq.
 
The Israelis are too much "distrustful" to tolerate a powerfull army near their borders, even if it belongs to an ally. Remember the USS Liberty, for example...
 
Necroing or thread littering? This thread still has room to grow, reviving it.

Syria is a much more complex situation than Iraq is, but invading it would send more of a message to Iran. Would the Bush administration have been willing to entertain this?
 
I think it would be harder to find bases for the invasion force.

Basing the invasion out of Israel makes US forces a magnet for terrorists and others. Basing out of Israel also hurts the US image in Arab and other countries.

Lebanon has the heavy Syrian influence. The Lebanese wouldn't allow the US to enter.

I'm guessing that Jordan wouldn't want the US invading out their territory either.

Turkey seems the best choice by far to me. Will the Turks agree to host the US invasion force?
 
Well, there's a lack of even vague cassus belli. The UN Security Council got bullied into authorizing the invasion based on the Weapons of Mass Destruction issue.

There's nothing comparable here. Syria wasn't under UN Sanctions, wasn't prohibited from having WMD's. Syria had not invaded two countries and wars of choice.

Well, arguably it invaded Lebanon, and fought an air war with Israel in 82. It had also fought wars with Israel in 67 and and 73. But the Lebanon thing was arguably to quell a civil war, and was shared with Israel, which had conducted its own invasion. And the last real war was 21 to 30 years old.

Syria appears to have had wmds in the form of chemical and possibly biological weapons, but no one took its nuclear program seriously.

Most importantly, Syria had no oil.
 
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