October 29, 2008 (LPAC)--Sami Moubayed, one of Syria's most prominent journalists and historians, reacted to the U.S. attack on Syria on Sunday in a column "The Strike that Shattered U.S.-Syria Ties." Moubayed was one of the Syrians who came to the U.S. in July in a program sponsored by the Search for Common Ground, U.S.-Syria Working Group.

Moubayed laments that the sixty years of relations between the United States and Syria now find themselves in tatters. He says that top officials in Damascus have blasted the cowboy tactics of U.S. forces and, he says, Syrian public opinion is now vociferously anti-American.

Moubayed pinpoints the start of his nation's relations with the United States when, in 1945, Nazim al-Quadsi, Syria's first Ambassador to the U.S., called for closer relations to the America which was on its way to becoming a single world power. This United States, Moubayed says, was the United States of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which promised the Syrians freedom from the hated French mandate system and spoke of self-determination and freedom for the people of the third world.

Noting that after the attack there was silence from the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House, Moubayed concludes that something was very amiss in Washington. He says, the so-called massacre won't lead to a war between the U.S. and Syria but marks an important turning point in the turbulent and unpredictable relationship that stretches back some 60 years.

Moubayed ends his column with a condition for the good neighbor policy which could well be followed by all nations: America is Syria's potential best friend. But this potential friendship will only work with a wise man like Roosevelt, not someone who invades airspace and kills civilians, like George W. Bush.