LEAVE IRAQ VIA TRIPOLI. American Thinker's Patrick Poole reacts to the Iraq Study Group report.

The Iraq Study Group has recommended that we engage the other powers in the region, namely Syria and Iran. Well, how about we engage the Syrians with several US Army and Marine divisions? The Baathist regime in Damascus would undoubtedly soil their trousers at such a sight. If President Bush is truly serious about taking out the dictatorships in the region, why don't we go after the only remaining Baathist regime? And the simple truth is that we wouldn't have to stay in Syria for any length of time, and there would certainly be no need to chase Bashar Assad around the Syrian countryside like we did Saddam Hussein. These Middle East dictatorships exist solely on the presence of their armies to subdue their people; once the Syrian army and air force is dispatched, let the Syrians sort their political situation out themselves. Any subsequent regime that would arise, even an Islamist one, would be severely weakened for the foreseeable future without a military.

Then we could keep rolling into Lebanon, where we have a blood debt to settle with Hezb'allah (recall the 1983 suicide bombings of the US Marine barracks and the US Embassy in Beirut). Having severed the Syrian and Iranian military hardware pipeline into Lebanon, a joint assault against Hezb'allah by the Americans from the east and the Israelis from the south could squeeze the life out of the terrorist organization, perhaps permanently. And as our troops loaded up in the port of Beirut to return home, we can pass along to Israel the Iraq Study Group's recommendation for them to engage Iran as they see fit.

Admittedly, the scenario I've just painted for Bush's Great American March to the Mediterranean Sea is laughably naïve and fraught with all kinds of logistical problems and diplomatic consequences. But the simple fact of the matter is that biggest obstacle to pulling such an operation off is the will of our leaders to do it. Not only could the American military win such an operation, but they would win decisively on both counts. Such a plan plays to the strengths of our military. And the eviction of the Baathist regime in Syria and placing a stranglehold on Hezb'allah in Lebanon would undeniably be in the long-term interests of the United States in the region. It is a reasonable to assume that Jordan and Turkey would not be eager to throw their lot with the Syrians, and no other power in the Middle East would be in a position to stop us if we chose to do so.

The full article offers additional cautions, demurrals, and qualifications.

I offer one quibble with this.

The only reason Americans care about a civil war is if our military gets caught in the middle of it and more Americans are killed. Once we are out of Iraq, very few Americans are going to lose sleep over a Sunni-Shi'a civil war. The hard reality is that such a civil war is in our best national interests, not unlike the Iran-Iraq War was in the 1980s. Such a conflict keeps Iran occupied and depletes their energies and resources.

It did not, however, secure the early release of the diplomats held captive in Tehran, nor did it go on without let or hindrance to oil exports by other countries in the neighborhood. The proposal also strikes me as somewhat optimistic: there's nothing to prevent terrorist organizations from going about their business in the middle of a civil war, much like burglars and muggers in urban turf contested by drug gangs.