IF PAKISTAN, WHY NOT SYRIA?

Eli Lake hits on the key point regarding the political fallout of the strike inside Syria's border:

The big mystery now is whether the next administration will dismantle this policy or permit Petraeus to follow it to fruition. Obama has said nothing about Sunday's strikes in Syria (a silence that has rightly earned him taunting from the McCain campaign). On one level, this new policy conflicts with Obama's stated desire for opening up diplomatic channels to places like Tehran and Damascus. On the other hand, this is precisely the type of policy that he has repeatedly promised at least for Pakistan, whose territory is believed to host Osama bin Laden: If America has actionable intelligence on al Qaeda leaders, and the country housing those terrorist sits on its hands, we will act. His campaign rhetoric has now become the official war policy he will inherit. Is this a development that pleases him?

It's hard to justify a position that allows strikes inside Pakistan, but not Syria. Spencer Ackerman thinks that Obama can draw a line that allows strikes against very senior al-Qaeda leadership, but not against lower level commanders. I don't know if that will be possible. On the other hand, I'm unconvinced that there's a hard choice between engaging Syria and Iran and carrying out these kinds of strikes. We do, after all, conduct diplomatic relations with Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries where we've carried out these kinds of strikes. The strike itself has nothing to do with American willingness to engage; such operations might make Tehran or Damascus more nervous, but the point of the engagement policy is to open the possibility of a bargain, not to set its particular terms. Any wide-ranging agreement with either Iran or Syria is almost certainly going to include provisions for action against al-Qaeda.

--Robert Farley