"Syria is Getting Away with Murder in Lebanon"

Syria is getting away with murder in Lebanon, and the UN Security Council is letting it happen. The resolution the Council passed last Thursday extended the UN investigation for another six months, but it failed to impose serious penalties on Syrian officials who continue to obstruct a thorough investigation. Some Council members, including the U.S., would have liked to do more to honor the urgent requests for help delivered last week by Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, but they ran into a wall of apologetics erected mainly by Russia, China, and Algeria. This watered-down resolution will do little to convince Damascus or anyone else that the international community is capable of taking effective action against a regime that exports terrorism and tramples with impunity on a neighboring country's sovereignty.

The will to impose consequences on Syria seems to have all but evaporated and no serious consequences will result any time soon. Syria's deadly meddling in Lebanon presented an ideal opportunity for the Security Council to show it was capable of taking effective diplomatic steps to defend vulnerable member states and punish brazen international terrorism. It is too bad that Russia, China, and Algeria failed to recognize the fundamental issues at stake.

Not only has Arab Baathist dictator Bashar Assad sought to obstruct a UN investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, but his agents in Lebanon are continuing to murder Syria's Lebanese critics, including Gebran Tueni, one of Lebanon's best-known journalists and politicians and a fierce critic of Syria's interference in Lebanon. There are powerful reasons to share the belief of Lebanon's elected leaders, who have no doubt that Assad is systematically murdering some of their most courageous and distinguished citizens in order to defy the international coalition that forced him to withdraw Syrian troops from Lebanon. Assad seems to be calculating that his acts of terrorism eventually will force Lebanon to accept Syrian dominion again and that the Security Council will shrink from an all-out confrontation with him.