5/19/2005 10:16:00 AM|||Nathan Moore|||

Michael Totten believes that the withdrawing Syrian troops took a strain of the Cedar Revolution back with them.

Whatever connection exists between a rising imperfect democracy in Iraq and a renascent democratic movement in Lebanon is debatable and indirect at best. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad didn’t trigger the upheaval in Beirut. The assasination of Rafik Hariri did. Still, when the U.S. ordered Bashar Assad to withdraw Syrian troops he said “I am not Saddam Hussein. I want to cooperate.” He did. Now he’s screwed.

I suppose the connectiong between Lebanon and Iraq is debatable, but the correlation between Iraq and the United States' growing reputation as a credible threat is not. It was this credible threat, at the correct time, that resulted in the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.

Arab nationalism, which characterizes itself as a freedom-hating ideology, is crumbling. Time will tell how far, but it is clear that Iraq's liberation is the catalyst in the transformation of the region.

|||111651615042019209|||Syrian Collapse?