Holding Syria Accountable
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Senate has now approved the Syria Accountability Act, passed last month by the House of Representatives. The legislation awaits the president’s pen after reconciliation with the House version. Once enacted, the bill will impose sanctions on the regime at Damascus, though the version passed by the Senate would allow the president to remove the sanctions at his discretion — presumably to reward any good behavior from Syria. The legislators found that Syria has used the railway linking Mosul, Iraq, to Aleppo, Syria, to transfer weapons to Iraq. Syria has received oil from Iraq in violation of U.N. resolutions. Syria holds a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin and is working on developing more effective chemical weapons. Syria provides safe haven and support to terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas. And 20,000 Syrian troops and security personnel occupy Lebanon.
In the lead up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration opposed the Syria Account ability Act as a distraction from Iraq. This may have been wise at the time, but now the administration has come around. The support for this action is solidly bipartisan; it passed the Senate 89-4. Even the Senate minority leader, Thos. Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, said the time “to sit back and hope for Syria to change course has passed,” and that it “simply has failed one too many times to live up to these obligations.”
It is time for America to make a forceful statement that we have moved into a new phase in the war on terrorism now that Iraq is being dealt with. It is something the dictatorships of the Middle East, not to mention the appeasers in Europe, need to hear loud and clear. Voting against the sanctions yesterday were Senators Byrd, Chafee, Enzi, and Jeffords — a Democrat, two Republicans, and a turncoat Republican-Independent. They need to hear it, too. It is also a time to remember the refusal of the Clinton administration to implement the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Americans need to know that, in contrast, the Syria Accountability Act will be enforced.
