Blame was quickly leveled at Syria after Lebanese Parliament Member Walid Eido was killed on Wednesday by a car bomb. The assassination may further destabilize an already shaky region.

Eido’s death marked the third assassination of a member of the anti-Syrian majority in the Lebanese parliament in the past 2½ years. The UN has already indicated that Syrian security forces may have been responsible for the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon.

Syria has never fully let go of its influence in the region, even after pulling its troops out in 2005. It intends to keep Lebanon as its own puppet government. Hariri’s son, Saad, said this of Syria: “They do not want Lebanon to rest. They do not want its government to rise or its army to do its job defending order.”

The anti-Syrian movement was gaining strength on its platform of cutting the Syrian marionette strings attached to Lebanon. The assassinations have definitely slowed the group’s progress.

“The parliamentary majority is diminishing and they are trying to change the political equation through assassination,” said MP Wael Abou Faour. Abou Faour’s accusations are not unfounded. As yet, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a Syrian supporter, has not called for elections to fill the vacant seats in parliament. With a few more assassinations and no replacement members, the majority could easily dwindle into minority status.

Syria has long intruded into Lebanese affairs, and those who speak out against Damascus’s meddling have been suffering car bombs and murders for just as long. Besides three parliament members, four other outspoken anti-Syrian leaders have been killed in the past two years.

Besides supporting the terrorist group Hezbollah and being a close ally of Iran, Damascus looks to also be in the business of assassinating those who speak out against them. Many, including the U.S. president, have drawn the same conclusion. The Globe and Mail wrote, “Mr. Bush noted the victims of the spate of attacks ‘have always been those who sought an end to Syrian President [Bashar] Assad’s interference in Lebanon’s internal affairs.’” The murders of seven publicly anti-Syrian figures is no coincidence.

And yet, the government that apparently murdered Eido, his son, his bodyguards and six civilians is the same government House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited to discuss peace. Syria is not a moderate government. To think that America has a moderate ally in Damascus is a grave mistake.