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US Raid inside Syria Kills 8

Juan Cole 10/26/2008

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US troops made a raid inside Syrian territory near Iraq, according to Syrian media, which left 8 persons (the Syrians say civilians) dead.

What is odd is that the Bush administration did not behave that way when the infiltration of fundamentalist vigilantes from the Syrian side was a more significant problem.

I don’t know if this is election politics on Bush’s part, an attempt by Bush-Cheney to mire Obama down in a Syria conflict they started.

Or maybe the secular, Alawi-dominated Baath Party of Syria, always afraid of the Sunni fundamentalists, has grown so terrified of Fatah al-Islam that they gave a secret go-ahead to the US to hit the fundamentalists where they had intelligence on them.

The ruling clique in Syria, Alawis, are a kind of folk Shiites much despised by Sunni fundamentalists. The feuding between the two has been visible in nearby Lebanon, in the northern port of Tripoli.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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