daniel levy has a pretty detailed discussion of the various theories about why the u.s. conducted last weekend's raid on syria. he presents one theory that i hadn't heard before: that the syrians cooperated with the americans on the raid. it's a bizarre idea, fitting the raid on syria into the context of the overall improvement of u.s.-syrian relations (though the alleged warming relations itself is just a hypothesis built around a handful of observations of recent events). that would mean that syria's outrage is all a sideshow. there's not much evidence for it, other than the absence of syrian anti-aircraft fire. and so i have a really hard time buying it. but otherwise levy's piece is pretty interesting.
(via juan cole)
