Yesterday President Bush signed an order imposing sanctions on Syria, for supporting and training terrorist groups and sending jihadis into Iraq.

Today Arabs are seething. I know! Amazing!

Al-Reuters says: US Chose Bad Time to Impose Syria Sanctions-Arabs.

BEIRUT, Lebanon (Reuters) - The United States, battling a prisoner abuse scandal and insurgency in Iraq, could not have chosen a worse time to slap new sanctions on Syria, Arabs said Wednesday.

Many warned that the sanctions, welcomed only by Syria’s arch-foe Israel, would fuel anger against America.

“If they are having such trouble in Iraq, they should at least calm down Iraq’s neighbors,” said Mohamed al-Sayed Said of Egypt’s al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

“Whoever is ruling Syria would be foolish not to try harder to embarrass the Americans in Iraq. Anyone seeing his regime so severely undermined and humiliated would have no option but to try and spoil it for the Americans in Iraq.”

What a perfect capsule statement of the shame-honor dynamic. This Egyptian “analyst” simply assumes that the most important goal is restoring honor, with no rational assessment at all; no weighing of costs, no moral checks and balances, no consideration whatsoever for the right or wrong of the situation. Severe humiliation demands revenge. Anything else would be foolish.

Full stop.