War with Syria

back in 2007, the president declared in writing that "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." He was referring to a hypothetical (but, at the time, seemingly likely) situation of the Bush administration striking Iran over its potential nuclear weapons development.

Allegedly

Zawahiri to Syrian Rebels: Damascus First, Then Cairo, Then Jerusalem

Zawahiri made his pitch for Muslim rebels to begin the process of retaking Jerusalem--by first taking Damascus and Cairo--in a videotape that was posted online on Feb. 11, 2012

In the tape, Zawahiri refers to "Sham"-a medieval territory encompassing lands that now include Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. He refers to the city of Jerusalem itself, by its Arabic name, al Quds.

Zawahiri, in his pitch for the Syrian rebels, also refers to the Syrian rebellion as a step toward the "liberation of Bayt al Maqdis," or the Al Aqsa Mosque and its environs. The Al Aqsa Mosque sits atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalim
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Syria is currently run by the secularist Baath Party. However, Bashar al-Asad, Syria's current leader, like his father Hafez al-Asad before him, is a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Al Qaeda is Sunni. Alawites like the Asads, according to the Congressional Research Service, comprise only about 12 percent of the Syrian population-yet are the key force in the Syrian regime and military.

"The Asads and the Baath party have cultivated Alawites as a key base of support, and elite security forces have long been led by Alawites," says the Congressional Research Service. "The government violently suppressed an armed uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, killing thousands of Sunni Muslims and others."

In his exhortation for Sunni Muslims to support the Syrian rebels, al Qaeda's Zawahiri sites what he calls the secularism and sectarianism (n.b. Alawite Shiism) of the Asad regime, and reminds Sunnis to be wary of help from the West because the West does not want the rise of a regime in Syria that will threaten Israel.

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Greater Syria or Natural Syria , Bilad ash-Sham , is a nationalist term that denotes a geographical definition of a hypothetical united Fertile Crescent state. The term denotes the restoration of the medieval Arab Caliphate province of Bilad al-Sham