Israel's preference, the official made clear, is that the Syrian regime be coerced into abandoning its support for terrorism in Iraq and against Israel, rather than it toppling outright. Even a new relatively pro-Western regime in Syria, similar to Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, might be problematic for Israel as it would invite pressure to "prop him up" by entering into negotiations over the Golan Heights.
In any case, our ability to make demands upon Syria is another reason to be optimistic about the war.
The fact that such an ultimatum could be credibly put forward is a measure of where things stand in the war against militant Islamism and the tempo of the transformation of the Middle East.
The Syrian regime has come under increasing pressure, not just by the demise of other radical regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya's well-timed capitulation, but from the tightening investigation of the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the recent "suicide" of the Syrian interior minister, and from President George Bush's recent speech reviving his own doctrine of regime change.
In other words, what is significant is not so much the ultimatum itself, but that circumstances have been created that could make accepting it attractive.
Indeed, for all the talk about fighting and winning the current global war, little attention is paid to how progress is to be measured and what key tasks must be accomplished. It is not, of course, a conventional war with fronts where armies meet and battles are clearly won or lost. This war, by contrast, should be measured in the number of terror-supporting regimes that are either replaced or are forced out of the terror (and nuclear weapons) business.
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