IS SYRIA THIS DECADE'S "FLY-PAPER"?

DUBYA HAS SAID HE REGRETS HAVING SAID "BRING 'EM ON!", BUT THE INFLUX OF JIHADIS INTO IRAQ WAS CALLED BY OTHERS "THE FLYPAPER STRATEGY":

It was Canadian essayist David Warren who in 2003 originated the concept of the so-called “Flypaper” strategy with regard to the war in Iraq.  As Warren wrote in his first essay on the subject:

While engaged in the very difficult business of building a democracy in Iraq — the first democracy should it succeed in the entire history of the Arabs — President Bush has also quite consciously to my information created a new playground for the enemy away from Israel and even farther away from the United States itself.  By the very act of proving this lower ground he drains terrorist resources from other swamps. 

This is the meaning of Mr. Bush's “bring 'em on” taunt from the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday when he was quizzed about the “growing threat to U.S. forces” on the ground in Iraq.  It should have been obvious that no U.S. President actually relishes having his soldiers take casualties.  What the media and U.S. Democrats affect not to grasp is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians both in Iraq and at large.  The sore thumb of the U.S. occupation — and it is a sore thumb equally to Baathists and Islamists compelling their response — is not a mistake.  It is carefully hung flypaper.

Nothing that has occurred since in Iraq and elsewhere has invalidated the fundamental correctness of this doctrine. 

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT SYRIA IS NOW PLAYING THE ROLE OF FLYPAPER - WITH THE ADDED ATTRACTION OF IT NOT COSTING ANY U.S. OR ALLIED LIVES.

WE SHOULD BE KEEPING THAT CIVIL WAR GOING AS LONG AS POSSIBLE, AND FIND WAYS THAT DO THAT WITH THE MINIMUM COLLATERAL DAMAGE.

THAT WOULD BE BY SENDING GUNS AND AMMO TO BOTH SIDES, BUT NO HEAVY WEAPONS THAT COULD TIP THE SCALES.