In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [80]
In response, Hezbollah followers, as well as their Christian allies, took to the streets of downtown Beirut. The protestors surrounded the Grand Serail, Siniora’s administrative offices, and erected a tent city, essentially occupying the center of the Lebanese capital. The state’s internal security forces erected a barbed-wire barricade between the protestors and the Grand Serail, which divided the downtown area in two. Hezbollah and its allies opened hospitality tents for visitors and foreign journalists. Their message was simple: the tribunal into Hariri’s murder is a US-Israeli plot to destroy Lebanon.
7
PLAYING WITH FIRE IN EASTERN SYRIA
Turning on the television the morning of January 11, 2007, I flicked through the local channels to catch the news, eager to get the Syrian reaction to President Bush’s much-anticipated policy announcement on Iraq the previous evening. Syrian TV Channel One reported on the spiraling violence in Iraq as well as criticisms by the new US Democratic House and Senate leaders of Bush’s speech. Eager to hear what the president said and with only a dial-up Internet connection at home, I headed for the Syria Today office, where one of the country’s relatively few DSL connections made video streaming possible.
My Internet browser chugged for several minutes to load the file. Finally, President Bush’s face filled up my laptop screen. Wearing a blue tie and standing before a bookshelf in the White House library, he looked older than I remembered him, with graying hair and a puffy face. As he started the first few lines of what would become one of the most important policy speeches of his administration, he breathed deeply between each sentence.
“Tonight in Iraq, the Armed Forces of the United States are engaged in a struggle that will determine the direction of the global war on terror—and our safety here at home,” Bush said, his voice slightly shaky. “The new strategy I outline tonight will change America’s course in Iraq and help us succeed in the fight against terror.”1
Bush went on to say that almost a year earlier, twelve million Iraqis had cast their ballots “for a unified and democratic nation.” However, spiraling violence following al-Qaeda’s bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque of Sammara in February 2006 had overwhelmed the election’s political gains. Calling the situation “unacceptable to the American people” as well as himself, Bush, in a rare mea culpa, admitted “mistakes have been made” and that “the responsibility rests with me.”
What Iraqis needed most was security, Bush said. With 80 percent of sectarian violence taking place within thirty miles of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Bush announced that he was ordering a twenty-thousand-person increase in force levels that would assist Iraqi security services and the army to clear neighborhoods, protect the population, and, unlike in the past, hold areas under coalition control. In another new step, Bush announced that coalition forces would now have a “green light” to go into all neighborhoods. He said that past “political and sectarian interference” had prevented US forces from going after those fueling the violence, a situation Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki now promised would “not be tolerated.”
Ten minutes into the speech, Bush turned his attention to Anbar Province, an area adjacent to Syria which al-Qaeda now used as a home base. Describing Anbar as “the most violent area outside the capital,” Bush cited a captured al-Qaeda document “describing the terrorists’ plan to infiltrate and seize control” of the province. Bush claimed that this would “bring al-Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq’s democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.” Bush said the situation was not without hope, as “local tribal leaders had begun to show their willingness to take on al-Qaeda,” a situation that US commanders believed provided “an opportunity to