US invades Syria in 2003 alongside Iraq

ar-pharazon

Banned
Syria was an opponent of the Us in the early 2000s, it allegedly allowed terrorists into western Iraq, and was listed IIRC as a sponsor of terrorism.

What if alongside invading Iraq the Bush administration invaded Syria?

Bashir al Assad hadn't been in office very long at this point and Iran had not yet signed a defense pact with Syria(that was in 2006).

I seem to recall Salon or Slate even had an article about how an invasion would proceed.

What if the US invaded Syria and Iraq at the same time-both to "spread democracy" and counter Iran's influence(which would probably backfire admittedly)

How would a US invasion of Syria proceed? How much success would it have compared to Iraq and how better or worse would the Syrian army perform as opposed to the Iraqi army?

If the US invaded both countries at the same time or say a year apart how would that affect the broader situation in the Middle East? The Saudis? Turks? Iranians? And Israelis?

How would it affect any sort of Arab Spring down the line?
 
There's no reason for the U.S. to do that. Syria wasn't invading anybody, didn't try to assassinate an ex-President, wasn't committing genocide against its own back then, etc.

These "WI George Bush invades random other Middle Eastern country instead or as well 'cause reasons" thread miss that even though the Iraq War was a really bad idea there were actual reasons why Iraq was invaded and the neocons were working off a kind of logic and theory (even if it was wrong). It doesn't apply anywhere else because only Iraq gave the U.S. so many casus belli.
 
This could probably work if the United States did not invade Afghanistan in 2001. I remember watching a documentary, in which it was explained Bush wanted to invade Iraq in 2001 immediately after 9/11 instead of Afghanistan. So let's say Iraq is somehow connected to 9/11 and the United States subsequently invades. The United States comes for Syria next in 2003. The Syrian Army probably performs better than the Iraqis because from what I read, the Iraqi Army had a severe lack of faith in Saddam in OTL, whereas in ATL, the Syrian Army would have at least made some preparation in response to the preceding invasion of Iraq. Both Baathist Regimes in the Levant would have been toppled, probably causing the formation of a pan-Levantine resistance group and causing the Arab Spring to happen much faster (because two Arab countries would now be democracies instead of one). Jordan and the Saudis will unquestionably be opposed because Iraq was seen as the buffer zone against Iran in OTL; in ATL, Iran will begin to influence its former ally Syria. Turkey will also oppose it because the Syrian Government helped oppress the Kurds (which will expand their influence). The Russians and Iranians will use the invasion as an opportunity to paint the United States as a regional hegemon and back resistance groups while playing the friend of the new governments. Israel will be welcome to the fall of Saddam and Assad.
 

gaijin

Banned
There's no reason for the U.S. to do that. Syria wasn't invading anybody, didn't try to assassinate an ex-President, wasn't committing genocide against its own back then, etc.

These "WI George Bush invades random other Middle Eastern country instead or as well 'cause reasons" thread miss that even though the Iraq War was a really bad idea there were actual reasons why Iraq was invaded and the neocons were working off a kind of logic and theory (even if it was wrong). It doesn't apply anywhere else because only Iraq gave the U.S. so many casus belli.

Objectively speaking there was also no reason to invade Iraq, besides the ideological imperative to spread democracy and remake the Middle East. This would provide reason enough. I remember that after the invasion of Iraq and before things went balls up there, there was indeed talk of doing this. The Neocon cabal running things at the time were saying things along the lines of "boys go to Damascus, men go to Teheran" (or something along those lines) to indicate that Syria would be the easy option and Iran the more challenging one.

After the hubris of invading Iraq, came the nemesis or trying to rule Iraq obviously.
 

SsgtC

Banned
This could probably work if the United States did not invade Afghanistan in 2001. I remember watching a documentary, in which it was explained Bush wanted to invade Iraq in 2001 immediately after 9/11 instead of Afghanistan.
Do you have anything that shows that? Because I know several Special Forces guys (SEALs, Delta, Green Berets) and they were deployed to Afghanistan within a couple of days of 9/11. And in one case, they knew within a couple hours where they were going
 
Do you have anything that shows that? Because I know several Special Forces guys (SEALs, Delta, Green Berets) and they were deployed to Afghanistan within a couple of days of 9/11. And in one case, they knew within a couple hours where they were going
I'll loomk for it on YouTube. My professor had it on a VHS tape. The man who was explaining it in the documentary was retained from the Clinton Administration and quit the following year.
 
This documentary is close to the one I saw, but not the exact same one. It explains at 1:25:30 that Donald Rumsfeld brought up the possibility of bombing Iraq.
 

SsgtC

Banned
This documentary is close to the one I saw, but not the exact same one. It explains at 1:25:30 that Donald Rumsfeld brought up the possibility of bombing Iraq.
Ok, so just from that, there is a world of difference between "a possibility of bombing Iraq" and invading Iraq. A minute later in that documentary, it's explained that literally EVERY country on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism was discussed for military action. Iraq wasn't singled out.
 

SsgtC

Banned
A document I meant to attach in one of my threads back in 2015.
One thing that maybe I should clarify. That document is a contingency planning document. We've got them for literally every country in the world. This was (without knowing the source) probably a staff project or the JCS taking a look at what would need to be done to defeat Iraq in battle and effect regime change. Trust me, this is nowhere near an operational plan. It reads more like talking points for a briefing in case we were ordered to invade Iraq.
 
One thing that maybe I should clarify. That document is a contingency planning document. We've got them for literally every country in the world. This was (without knowing the source) probably a staff project or the JCS taking a look at what would need to be done to defeat Iraq in battle and effect regime change. Trust me, this is nowhere near an operational plan. It reads more like talking points for a briefing in case we were ordered to invade Iraq.
I'll have to ask for the exact documentary. I'll email the professor and hopefully they'll have already converted it from VHS to digital. And hopefully they'll remember their old student.
 

SsgtC

Banned
I'll have to ask for the exact documentary. I'll email the professor and hopefully they'll have already converted it from VHS to digital. And hopefully they'll remember their old student.
Please do! I'd be very interested in seeing it.
 
AFAIK, the idea wasn't necessarily instead if Afghanistan. Several people from the administration have stated Bush wanted to invade Iraq, going back to January 2001. Paul O'Neill is one. Tommy Franks, IIRC, said Bush asked him to start planning in Nov. 2001.
 
Objectively speaking there was also no reason to invade Iraq, besides the ideological imperative to spread democracy and remake the Middle East. This would provide reason enough. I remember that after the invasion of Iraq and before things went balls up there, there was indeed talk of doing this. The Neocon cabal running things at the time were saying things along the lines of "boys go to Damascus, men go to Teheran" (or something along those lines) to indicate that Syria would be the easy option and Iran the more challenging one.

After the hubris of invading Iraq, came the nemesis or trying to rule Iraq obviously.

Even if a couple people made off the cuff wartime remarks on cable news that doesn't mean it was ever policy.

What I'm saying is that there are reasons why the decision was made to invade Iraq. The neocon theory was that Saddam's Iraq was the nexus of anti-Americanism in the Middle East, a threat to the U.S., and that it had WMDs. Taking it and turning it into a democracy would turn the cradle of civilization into a multi-ethnic and religious model for the Middle East and result in further change.

Syria was different. It was not nearly so prominently anti-American (we gave them aid and they sent troops to fight Saddam in the Gulf War in 1991), they weren't aggressive enough to paint convincingly as a threat to the U.S., and while they actually did have chemical weapons the fact that they were rational and not aggressive simply didn't make them very scary. The human rights situation was also much better.

Invading Syria doesn't fit the paradigm the neocons were working out of back then. Even if it was completely wrong it still existed.
 

BooNZ

Banned
Even if a couple people made off the cuff wartime remarks on cable news that doesn't mean it was ever policy.

What I'm saying is that there are reasons why the decision was made to invade Iraq. The neocon theory was that Saddam's Iraq was the nexus of anti-Americanism in the Middle East, a threat to the U.S., and that it had WMDs. Taking it and turning it into a democracy would turn the cradle of civilization into a multi-ethnic and religious model for the Middle East and result in further change.

Syria was different. It was not nearly so prominently anti-American (we gave them aid and they sent troops to fight Saddam in the Gulf War in 1991), they weren't aggressive enough to paint convincingly as a threat to the U.S., and while they actually did have chemical weapons the fact that they were rational and not aggressive simply didn't make them very scary. The human rights situation was also much better.

Invading Syria doesn't fit the paradigm the neocons were working out of back then. Even if it was completely wrong it still existed.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Clark said, he visited the Pentagon, where an old colleague, a three-star general, confided to him that the civilian authorities running the Pentagon—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team—planned to use the September 11th attacks as a pretext for going to war against Iraq. “They made the decision to attack Iraq sometime soon after 9/11,” Clark said. “So, rather than searching for a solution to a problem, they had the solution, and their difficulty was to make it appear as though it were in response to a problem.” Clark visited the Pentagon a couple of months later, and the same general told him that the Bush team, unable or unwilling to fight the actual terrorists responsible for the attacks, had devised a five-year plan to topple the regimes in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Iran, and Sudan. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/11/17/general-clarks-battles

Notwithstanding the above, I suspect it was the performance of Hezbollah in 2006 that painted cross hairs on the Assad regime.
 
Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Clark said, he visited the Pentagon, where an old colleague, a three-star general, confided to him that the civilian authorities running the Pentagon—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team—planned to use the September 11th attacks as a pretext for going to war against Iraq. “They made the decision to attack Iraq sometime soon after 9/11,” Clark said. “So, rather than searching for a solution to a problem, they had the solution, and their difficulty was to make it appear as though it were in response to a problem.” Clark visited the Pentagon a couple of months later, and the same general told him that the Bush team, unable or unwilling to fight the actual terrorists responsible for the attacks, had devised a five-year plan to topple the regimes in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Iran, and Sudan. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/11/17/general-clarks-battles

Notwithstanding the above, I suspect it was the performance of Hezbollah in 2006 that painted cross hairs on the Assad regime.

Wesley Clark is a partisan Democrat who ran for President on that ticket, so there is a bias to that particular source.

I frankly don't believe it (not least of which because we were actually providing aid to Lebanon and counting them as a major ally at the time), or I think Clark confused or exaggerated contingency plans regarding those countries (which exist for every place and scenario as was pointed out earlier in the thread). After 9/11, there was a flurry of staff planning for operations in every part of the Middle East. That doesn't mean those were ever supposed to be put into play, but it is easy to cherrypick and exaggerate them.
 

BooNZ

Banned
I frankly don't believe it (not least of which because we were actually providing aid to Lebanon and counting them as a major ally at the time)
actually Hezbollah was not a major US ally...

Even before the border skirmish, some in Congress had voiced deep unease about providing military aid to a country where Hezbollah has a place in the cabinet and runs its own intelligence and communications networks. The American aid was conceived in 2005, after Syria withdrew its military from Lebanon and a pro-Western political alliance seemed to be gaining strength, with the goal of disarming Hezbollah.

The administration of President George W. Bush gave strong verbal support to Lebanon’s anti-Syrian parliamentary alliance, and in 2006 the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah buttressed the notion that Lebanon needed a stronger military as a national alternative to the Shiite group’s militia. American military aid began to flow to Lebanon for the first time in decades. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/world/middleeast/22lebanon.html

...or I think Clark confused or exaggerated contingency plans regarding those countries (which exist for every place and scenario as was pointed out earlier in the thread). After 9/11, there was a flurry of staff planning for operations in every part of the Middle East. That doesn't mean those were ever supposed to be put into play, but it is easy to cherrypick and exaggerate them.

In the past few weeks, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered contingency plans for a war on Syria to be reviewed following the fall of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, his undersecretary for policy, Doug Feith, and William Luti, the head of the Pentagon's office of special plans, were asked to put together a briefing paper on the case for war against Syria, outlining its role in supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein, its links with Middle East terrorist groups and its allegedly advanced chemical weapons programme
. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/15/syria.usa

Sound familiar?
 
I think the best bet for invading Syria would be as a response to them sending Jihaidis across the border into occupied Iraq.

Mind you, this would have to take place pretty early on, probably even before Saddam is apprehended. (would he try and escape to Syria ITTL?)
 

elkarlo

Banned
Objectively speaking there was also no reason to invade Iraq, besides the ideological imperative to spread democracy and remake the Middle East. This would provide reason enough. I remember that after the invasion of Iraq and before things went balls up there, there was indeed talk of doing this. The Neocon cabal running things at the time were saying things along the lines of "boys go to Damascus, men go to Teheran" (or something along those lines) to indicate that Syria would be the easy option and Iran the more challenging one.

After the hubris of invading Iraq, came the nemesis or trying to rule Iraq obviously.
I remember time or newsweek were pushing for this as well. Talking about how easy it would be to topple Iran and or Syria. The ear drums were beating for a while.
 
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