Michael Yon explains for Pajamas Media why the United States felt forced to act against a building inside Syria this weekend.

The situation can be summarized as follows: Syria does not do anything to prevent extremists from entering Iraq through the Syrian-Iraqi border. These extremists can walk over the border, after which they join forces with other extremists who arm them and tell them what targets to attack.

Not long after, they start fighting against U.S. troops, Iraqi troops and even Iraqi civilians, all in an attempt to create chaos, resulting in them being able to take over the country as a whole.

“I’ve been right up to that desolate border on a number of occasions. The terrorists just come across that border to murder and otherwise intimidate Iraqi villagers in Nineveh to achieve their nefarious ends. Some of the truck bombs in Nineveh and Mosul proper have been massive, and during one attack that I have previously written about, perhaps four to five hundred Yezidis were murdered within minutes. The Yezidis are very friendly toward Americans and have treated me like an honored guest. When they were attacked, it felt like a punch into my own stomach, and so I wrote “Stake Through Their Hearts” after hundreds were murdered,” Yon writes.

“The insurgency in Mosul is the last big thorn left in Iraq’s paw. That we struck targets in Syria does not surprise me and I am not appalled. I am appalled that Syria allows these groups to use its territory as a base and conduit to destabilize Iraq. A Syrian government that allows these groups to penetrate Iraq’s borders and murder Iraqis and Americans doesn’t have much moral standing to complain about an incursion into its territory.”

Although the U.S. attack has been criticized by some, the reality of the situation is that the Syrian government has only itself to blame for the attack. Interestingly enough, even the Iraqi government has condemned the attack saying it “had not authorized it.”

That, however, is logical since the Iraqi government is doing what all other governments in the Middle East do: use anti-Americanism to their advantage. Even if the U.S. does something good, for it attacks Arabs that have to be attacked, other Arabs will condemn the attack simply because their people feel a strong bond with Arabs living in other countries.

In the meantime, though, you can be quite sure that the Iraqi government celebrated the attack.