WASHINGTON — Bold U.S. raids into Pakistan and Syria show the stark choice the Bush administration is putting to both friends and adversaries in its final weeks: Clamp down on militants and terrorists or we'll do it for you.
Raids like the one in Syria on Sunday hold the potential to kill or capture wanted al-Qaida terrorists or other militants, but they also risk killing civilians and angering foreign governments and their citizens.
Selective U.S. military action across the borders of nations friendly and unfriendly reflects increasing willingness to embrace what U.S. commanders consider a last resort: violating the sovereignty of a nation with whom the U.S. is not at war.
It's a demonstration of overt military strength that the U.S. has been reluctant to display in public for fear it would backfire on U.S. forces or supporters within the governments of the nations whose borders were breached.
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Now, senior U.S. officials favor judicious use of the newly aggressive tactics, seeing more upsides than down. They reason that whatever diplomatic damage is done will be mitigated when President Bush leaves office and a new president is inaugurated.
That may work in Syria, where the government has already said it is looking forward to a better relationship with the next U.S. president, said Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In Pakistan, however, special-operations raids could box in the new American president by inflaming an already outraged public.
"Public opinion is already very strongly against the U.S. and 'anti' any U.S. role or interference," Cordesman said. "It's not clear that you are not building up a broad public resistance that will bind the next administration."
The target of Sunday's raid in Sukkariyeh, Syria, just over the Iraq border from Husaybah, was a man known as Abu Ghadiyah, the leader of the most prolific network to move al-Qaida-associated foreign fighters into Iraq.
Syria said troops in four helicopters attacked a building and killed eight people, including four children.
The cross-border action from U.S. positions inside Iraq comes at a touchy time in U.S.-Iraqi relations. The two sides are negotiating an agreement to extend the legal basis for American forces in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires on Dec. 31.
The attack comes at a time when Syria has been working to improve its image in the world.
The United States has been asking Syria to hand over, capture or kill Abu Ghadiyah for months or years. The U.S. Treasury Department says he ran a resupply operation on the Syrian border.
The raid came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an "uncontrolled" gateway for fighters entering Iraq.
Syria called the raid a "serious aggression," and its foreign ministry summoned the charges d'affaires of the United States and Iraq in protest.
The U.S has become frustrated with the use of Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas as a safe haven for militants over the nearly seven years since the Taliban was rousted from Afghanistan for harboring Osama bin Laden.
On Monday, suspected U.S. missiles killed 20 people at the house of a Taliban commander near the Afghan border, the latest volley in a two-month onslaught on militant bases inside Pakistan, officials said.
Missile attacks have killed at least two senior al-Qaida commanders in Pakistan's wild border zone this year.
On StarNet: Find breaking news on U.S. military actions at azstarnet.com/attack
