o the present day. In the 1980s, Syria sent its army into Lebanon and occupied much of the country, and Lebanon remains under very heavy Syrian influence.
Indeed, a cynic might say that the most important differences between Syria and Iraq, from the standpoint of their governments, are that Syria does not have oil, and its leadership had no personal "history" with the Bush family. With respect to international terrorism, at least, Syria's record has over the years been considerably worse than Iraq's.
Although the Saddam Hussein regime was brutally repressive at home and aggressive abroad, its involvement with terrorism was quite limited. In fact, except for a bungled assassination attempt against the first President Bush (during a visit to the Gulf region in 1993, after he was out of office), no high-profile international terrorist action has been linked directly to Iraq. Iraqi terror activity abroad was almost entirely confined to action against Iraqi exiles.
In contrast, Syria in the 1970s and 1980s was a leading sponsor of international terrorism, though primarily against Israel, Israelis, or interests associated with Israel. It was heavily involved in providing financial and other support to militant organizations, particularly those operating in Lebanon, which ultimately succeeded in forcing the Israelis to withdraw from the portions of south Lebanon which they had occupied in the 1980s and 1990s.
Finally, a striking similarity between Iraq and Syria is that both countries' ruling elements were drawn from religious minority groups. In Iraq the ruling group was drawn from Sunni Muslims, who are the majority in the Muslim world as a whole, but a minority in Iraq, the majority of whose population are Shia Muslims. In Syria, the ruling group was drawn from Alawites, a Muslim sect with a significant but limited following in Syria, but with very few members anywhere else in the Islamic world. The religious mi...