Brace yourselves. Everyone has been waiting for the "October Surprise" that might help Republican John McCain overcome the lead of his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, in the race for the White House. Now it looks like the outgoing president, George W. Bush, has a strategy that could have a direct - and highly destabilizing - impact here in Lebanon.

For months, many observers had been assuming that if the Bushies were going to do something to rally the American public around the flag (and therefore around the incumbent party), the venue would be Iran. The Iranians have a nuclear program that the Americans and their Israeli allies don't like, and although Washington's own intelligence community has concluded that any Iranian effort to develop atomic weapons ended five years ago, threats of military action have not gone away.

Taking on the Islamic Republic, though, was always going to be a dicey bit of business. Iran, after all, is not Iraq: It has not been strangled by more than a decade of sanctions, and its military, while not capable of projecting conventional power very far from its own borders, is no play thing. The leadership and "political reliability" of the regular armed forces have been significantly enhanced in recent years, undoing much of the damage wrought by the counter-productive purges that followed the 1979 revolution against the US-backed shah and which aided the subsequent invasion by Saddam Hussein (also then a client of the United States).

The backbone of any Iranian defense, though, would be the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, to which more and better resources have long been directed. The Guards' equipment does not match America's in terms of technology, but it packs a solid punch, its morale is excellent, and its special forces units are world-class in terms of both training and experience.

In short, anything but a campaign of air strikes figured to involve the US military in yet another Middle Eastern morass, and this at a time when its forces were already dangerously overstretched by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is not to mention the many ways in which Iran could retaliate in other theaters for any American offensive. For example, absent encouragement from Tehran, the Mehdi Army militia of hard-line Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose unilateral cease-fire has played a large role in reducing violence in Iraq, might just decide to resume its former activities. In addition, both Hizbullah and Hamas have received considerable support from Iran over the years and would find it difficult to resist if some of those favors were to be called in.

Then came another kind of "surprise." The global financial crisis that broke out earlier this month did not just damage McCain's campaign by exposing his fundamental (and openly acknowledged) ignorance on economic matters ahead of an era in which such abilities are likely to be at a premium. It also forced the US government to take on trillions of dollars in new liabilities in a bid to restore confidence in the markets. Given the gargantuan deficits and debt already amassed by Bush's profligate spending on wars against Muslims, tax breaks for the rich, and subsidies for large corporations, a costly war with Iran is simply no longer a viable option.

For all of these reasons, Syria must look like a more attractive target, especially if Washington can maintain a level of hostilities that is sufficient to pique the average American's "patriotism" but not so intense that it incurs significant costs. There is no guarantee, however, that the Syrians would cooperate with such an approach, even though any form of response in kind on their part would only invite the Americans to escalate disproportionately, especially with their overwhelming advantage in air power.

The ball seems to have gotten rolling in a Syrian village near the Iraqi border shortly before dusk on Sunday. According to Damascus, US troops arrived in helicopters and assaulted a building under construction at a farmstead, killing eight civilians - half of them children.

The Bush administration's official reaction has been painfully slow in coming, but according to an Associated Press report, a US military officer has confirmed that an attack was carried out by special forces. "We are taking matters into our own hands," AP quoted the officer as saying on condition of anonymity because of what the reporter described as the "political sensitivity" - no mention of patent illegality - "of cross-border raids." Pointedly, the comments came in Washington, not from an officer on the ground in Iraq, where the US military professed to be in the dark about the attack in Syria.

Some US officials have long accused both Syria and Iran of aiding armed groups inside Iraq and/or of not doing enough to stop "foreign fighters" from crossing the country's borders in order to join the insurgency. They have offered little to no evidence to support their claims, and at least some military officers serving in Iraq (as opposed to the political generals occasionally dispatched by the White House to toss accusations around) have stated that the vast majority of insurgents seem to come from US-allied countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Nonetheless, it seems clear that in the case of Syria at least, the border has not been much of an obstacle to those wishing to battle US occupation forces in Iraq. Syrian officials have acknowledged the problem and insist they are doing their best, but they stress the paltry resources available for the challenge. To demonstrate the difficulties involved, they also note America's failure to seal its own borders against illegal immigration from Mexico - or Iraq's against Kurdish rebels entering Turkish territory to carry out attacks there.

In any event, as Bush administration officials cannot exhale without mentioning, the level of violence in Iraq has plummeted, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and other officials have very recently attested to improved cooperation from Damascus. So why now? The timing has got to be instilling a sense of deja vu among senior members of the Syrian regime. They recall with consternation that even after US diplomats publicly acknowledged the value of Syrian intelligence assistance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush and other senior figures kept up their menacing rhetoric about Damascus.

This looks to be different. Even if Damascus were still a target in Bush's so-called "war on terror," the timing is so vulnerable to accusations of an attempt to influence the election that only a dire threat could possibly justify taking the risk. Even if it turns out that what the Americans hit was indeed tied to the insurgency, therefore, hitting it now makes no sense - unless the real objective is to capture the hearts and minds of undecided voters in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Unlike Iran's, Syria's options for responding to military action are few. It cannot risk a full-scale confrontation, since even a wounded and distracted America could probably knock off its leadership within weeks - if not days. Its economy is too fragile to sustain even a low-intensity conflict that drags on for any length of time, and while Damascus has also helped Hizbullah and Hamas, its leverage as a facilitator is nothing like Tehran's as a procurer.

Given its weak position and limited reach, Damascus' best bet is to follow the approach it has taken with regard to Israel's bombing last year of Deir al-Zor: Express outrage, lodge complaints and assert the right to respond appropriately - but under no circumstances do anything that might be used as a pretext for escalation by the other side. Even if this is just the first salvo in a cynical attempt by the Bush administration to increase the market value of McCain's supposed expertise in matters military, self-preservation demands that the Syrians keep their heads down and hope that Obama wins the White House and then makes good on his promise as a conciliatory figure.

However, if the regime decides instead not to take the American action lying down, the riposte is liable to be played out in Lebanon. America has commercial, diplomatic and political interests here, Damascus still has plenty of levers left over from its long period of "tutelage," and Beirut's security apparatuses are already spread too thin by too many challenges, especially in the North.

As has traditionally been the case, then, if outside powers don't start drawing in their horns, it's the Lebanese who will get gored.

Marc J. Sirois is managing editor of THE DAILY STAR.