DAMASCUS, Syria — One wonders what planet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice landed from, thinking she can build an international force to take charge in south Lebanon without going to Damascus and trying to bring the Syrians on board.

Two Syrian officials made no bones about it when I asked their reaction to deploying such a force, without Syrian backing: Do you remember what happened in 1983, each asked, when the Reagan administration tried to impose an Israeli-designed treaty on Lebanon against Syria's will?

I was there, I remember quite well: Hezbollah, no doubt backed by Syria or Iran, debuted its skills for the world by blowing up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping battalions. This is not a knitting circle here.

Can we get the Syrians on board? Can we split Damascus from Tehran? My conversations here suggest it would be very hard, but worth a shot. It is the most important strategic play we could make, because Syria is the bridge between Iran and Hezbollah. But it would take a high-level, rational dialogue. Rice says we can deal with Syria through normal diplomatic channels. Really?

We've withdrawn our ambassador from Damascus and the U.S. diplomats left here are allowed to meet only the Foreign Ministry's director of protocol, whose main job is to ask how you like your Turkish coffee. Syria's ambassador in Washington is similarly isolated.

Is this Syrian regime brutal and ruthless? You bet it is. If the Bush team wants to go to war with Syria, I get that. But the U.S. boycott of Syria is not intimidating Damascus. (Its economy is still growing, thanks to high oil prices.) So we're left with the worst of all worlds — a hostile Syria that is not afraid of us.

We need to get real on Lebanon. Hezbollah made a reckless mistake in provoking Israel. Shame on Hezbollah for bringing this disaster upon Lebanon by embedding its "heroic" forces amid civilians. I understand Israel's vital need to degrade Hezbollah's rocket network. But Hezbollah's militia, which represents 40 percent of Lebanon, the Shiites, can't be wiped out at a price that Israel, or America's Arab allies, can sustain — if at all.

You can't go into an office in the Arab world today without finding an Arab TV station featuring the daily carnage in Lebanon. It's now the Muzak of the Arab world, and it is toxic for us and our Arab friends.