Syria

The AP is reporting that over the weekend US forces launched an attack into Syria using Army Helicopters:

"We are taking matters into our own hands," the official told The Associated Press in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.

The attack came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an "uncontrolled" gateway for fighters entering Iraq

A Syrian government statement said the helicopters attacked the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction shortly before sundown and fired on workers inside, the statement said.

The government said civilians were among the dead, including four children.

A resident of the nearby village of Hwijeh said some of the helicopters landed and troops exited the aircraft and fired on a building. He said the aircraft flew along the Euphrates River into the area of farms and several brick factories. The witness spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Now I realize the Syrian government is totally perfidious and is trying to use this attack to make us look bad, and that government is the source of the news about the dead civilians and children.

On the other hand, we're going to need Syrian government cooperation as part of some kind of regional concert to keep the situation in Iraq reasonably contained as we draw down troops, and this sort of attack isn't helpful. I understand that we want to protect our troops in Iraq, and stem the flow of foreign fighters and materiel into the war zone, but I have to imagine there are better ways to go about it than this.

I don't see why we couldn't have predator drones or a geosynched satellite keep an eye on the farm that we targeted, and then hit the fighters when they crossed into Iraq, thus not having to actually fire weapons in Syria. I'm by no means a soveriegnty absolutist- I have no problem with targetting bin Laden in tribal areas of Pakistan, because that's where he's holed up. On the other hand, breaching sovereignty carries a cost, and if we knew that bin Laden was routinely crossing into Afghanistan probably the thing to do would be to wait until he gets out of Pakistan to hit him. Unless there were significant caches of arms at the targeted Syrian farm, or some reason that the farm itself needed to be destroyed, why not just wait until the guys we actually want to kill (and we want to kill them because they're going into Iraq) actually go into Iraq?