The Road to Damascus: What the recent toppling means to that other Ba'athist state.

Most of the world's TV stations broadcast images of toppling Saddam statues. Not in Syria, though: When the Iraqi regime fell, Syrian TV suddenly changed its format and broadcast history films. The country's state-controlled media had not ignored the war in Iraq up until that point. Quite the opposite: They had closely, albeit stiltedly, followed the war's every gruesome twist, and reveled in heartrending scenes of dying civilians. But they just could not bring themselves to report the collapse of the neighboring Ba'athist regime.

The actions of the Syrian government were even more surprising: It swam toward the sinking ship. President Bashar Assad had said before the war that he intended to assist Saddam Hussein. Evoking the occupation of Baghdad by Mongolians in 1258, he declared: "This time some Arab capitals will stand beside Baghdad. When I talk about some Arab capitals, it does not make sense to exclude Syria, which is the closest and at the heart of battles against invaders, because [Syria] is the heart of Arabism." Assad was true to his word. Over the past few weeks defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused Damascus of supplying Baghdad with military equipment; and secretary of state Colin Powell said that Syria would bear responsibility for its aid to terrorists. Syria remained defiant. As Baghdad was falling, Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa said his country would not stop volunteers heading to Iraq, via Syria, to fight U.S. troops.

What explains this seemingly suicidal policy? Why -- in the wake of such an impressive display of U.S. power and resolve -- did Assad throw caution to the wind and decide to risk being America's next target? After all, soon after 9/11 he had cautiously cooperated with the U.S. by arresting a few members of an al-Qaeda affiliate terror group. He seemed, then, to understand the need to avoid America's wrath.

The explanation is despair, and the nature of the ideology that motivates the regime. Despite the fact that relations between the Ba'athist regimes in Baghdad and Damascus were always strained, tyranny's collapse in Iraq threatens nobody in the Arab world more than the Ba'athists in Syria. They now face the challenge of maintaining their control over a population that, for the first time, can realistically dream of freedom.

Syria's confrontational attitude toward the U.S. is thus not irrational. It follows the logic of frightened tyrannies, which become more aggressive as their grip on their population is threatened. Even before Washington issued public warnings to Damascus, Assad gave an interview to the pro-Syrian Lebanese paper Al-Safir admitting that Syria feels threatened by the war, and that he believes that Syria could become the next U.S. target.

This new shrillness in Damascus reflected Syria's deepening fear. After Afghanistan, Assad could accept a limited, "tactical" cooperation with the U.S. He acted against the renegade al-Qaeda group -- which Syria opposed anyway -- because doing so did not diminish his larger ability to continue to confront the U.S. He would surrender a finger (al- Qaeda's minor offshoot) to save an arm (Hezbollah and other terrorist groups). Furthermore, Damascus saw the war in Afghanistan less as a war for freedom than as a vengeful reaction to 9/11, aimed narrowly at destroying the Taliban and al-Qaeda. After Iraq, however, it is becoming clear to Syria that America's war on terrorism is of substantially larger scope: It is a war about freedom, and as such it threatens the Syrian regime's very existence. For Assad, the risks of inaction now outweigh the risks of action.

And his actions are based directly on the regime's anti-American ideology. Ba'athism -- a feeble local fusion of Communism and romantic German national socialism -- views America as a mortal foe, whose very nature as a symbol of individual freedom can be neither digested nor tolerated by an enslaving regime.

In this regard, Syria is a microcosm of what ails the entire region: It exposes the current Middle Eastern vacuum of good ideas. For a century, the Arab world has been energized by the hope that it could overcome its weaknesses and societal ills by the sheer force of numbers -- once it became united. Unity would create an empire of all Arabs or, even better, all Muslims. Bin Ladenism is just the most recent chapter in this long story. Until now, no Middle Eastern democracy could be created because the region has been gripped by ideas -- pan-Arab nationalism, on the secular end, and pan-Islamic fundamentalism, on the religious end -- that focus on supra-nationalist notions of community, and the quest for ideological unity at the expense of individual freedom, citizenship, and the delimited nation-state. The pan-Arab and pan-Islamic ideas had only limited success, but they have continued to capture the imagination of young Arabs and Muslims because no other choices were being offered.

Ba'athist ideology is part of this whirlpool. It rests on the double pillars of socialism and secular Arab nationalism. Its focus on Arab unity means that the Syrian regime strives to transcend the Syrian state and replace it with the union of all Arabs. The Ba'ath teaches that only when the Arabs unite will they restore their past grandeur as the world's leading civilization. Syria thus represents the most intense form of the general malaise afflicting the Arab world, and the most extreme of its desperate reactions. But our quarrel with Syria is just a token of our future predicament with the rest of the region's dictators: We should get ready for similar confrontations and mischief throughout the Middle East.

Although the regime we fought in Iraq was secular, our actions struck at the heart of religious despotism as well. (This is why jihadists -- al-Qaeda and others -- flocked to Iraq's defense, even though they loathed its government on religious grounds.) Because we have mortally challenged both kinds of tyranny, we now have a unique opportunity to fill the region's vacuum of ideas. This gives our current military victory a broader purpose: securing a permanent regional political change. Our ideas are our most powerful weapon, and we should not shirk from wielding them to trigger such a profound change.

Our action has the potential to trigger the greatest revolution in the region in many generations. Democratic ideas can answer the failure of both pan-Islamic and pan-Arab worldviews. Despite the shock value of the 9/11 attacks, Islamic fundamentalism has failed to gather momentum. The attacks did not defeat America. On the contrary: America came to fight in the heart of the Islamic world and is now defeating Arab tyranny. Similarly, little more remains of Arab nationalism than empty phrases and the bravado of information ministers. For all its bluster, Syria could do nothing to save the failed Iraqi regime. It is also largely impotent to challenge the new American-inspired Middle Eastern order. Syria alone remains the flag-bearer of a failed ideology that brought only war, oppression, and disaster to millions in the Arab world.

The temptation of freedom is indivisible. What just transpired in Baghdad cannot be easily contained by even the most repressive security apparatus. The U.S. need not go to war with Damascus, unless Damascus chooses to make a violent last stand, either directly or by employing terrorism. We should, however, launch a war of ideas. We should pursue regime change by crafting a policy that channels our post-Iraq momentum into a focused pressure on the Syrian regime's legitimacy. Some useful, feasible actions include: denouncing, in every forum, Syria's occupation of Lebanon; reminding the world it is a tyranny; holding it accountable for supporting terror; ceasing official governmental contacts. The list is practically endless. Since Syria cannot avoid confronting the U.S., the U.S. can make its addiction to confrontation fatal. If we succeed, our power and ideas may succeed in giving the Syrian people the same new hope the Iraqis have already celebrated in the streets.