"Pratfall In Damascus"

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Pratfall in Damascus

Nancy Pelosi's foolish shuttle diplomacy


HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad. After a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Ms. Pelosi announced that she had delivered a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria. What's more, she added, Mr. Assad was ready to "resume the peace process" as well. Having announced this seeming diplomatic breakthrough, Ms. Pelosi suggested that her Kissingerian shuttle diplomacy was just getting started. "We expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria," she said.

Only one problem: The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message. "What was communicated to the U.S. House Speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel," said a statement quickly issued by the prime minister's office. In fact, Mr. Olmert told Ms. Pelosi that "a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel." In other words, Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda.

Ms. Pelosi was criticized by President Bush for visiting Damascus at a time when the administration -- rightly or wrongly -- has frozen high-level contacts with Syria. Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker's freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That's true enough -- but those other congressmen didn't try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.

Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush's military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.

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When a dilettante takes on Hizbullah

By Michael Young
Daily Star staff


We can thank the US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for having informed Syrian President Bashar Assad, from Beirut, that "the road to solving Lebanon's problems passes through Damascus." Now, of course, all we need to do is remind Pelosi that the spirit and letter of successive United Nations Security Council resolutions, as well as Saudi and Egyptian efforts in recent weeks, have been destined to ensure precisely the opposite: that Syria end its meddling in Lebanese affairs.

Pelosi embarked on a fool's errand to Damascus this week, and among the issues she said she would raise with Assad - when she wasn't on the Lady Hester Stanhope tour in the capital of imprisoned dissidents Aref Dalila, Michel Kilo, and Anwar Bunni - is "the role of Syria in supporting Hamas and Hizbullah." What the speaker doesn't seem to have realized is that if Syria is made an obligatory passage in American efforts to address the Lebanese crisis, then Hizbullah will only gain. Once Assad is re-anointed gatekeeper in Lebanon, he will have no incentive to concede anything, least of all to dilettantes like Pelosi, on an organization that would be Syria's enforcer in Beirut if it could re-impose its hegemony over its smaller neighbor.

Inasmuch as it is possible to evoke sympathy in such cases, one can sympathize with Hizbullah. In 2000, the party lost much of its reason to exist as a military force when the Israelis withdrew from Southern Lebanon. The manufacturing of the Shebaa Farms pretext, thanks to the diligent efforts of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, bought Hizbullah an extension, a handy fig leaf allowing it to keep its weapons. Last summer, however, the party's initiation of a war devastating to Lebanon, followed by its efforts to lead a coup against the majority, demolished any lingering cross-sectarian support that Hizbullah had enjoyed.

Hizbullah's weapons are no longer regarded as weapons of resistance by most Lebanese, but as weapons of sectarian discord. The party's effort to torpedo the Hariri tribunal has created a perception that it is siding with Rafik Hariri's murderers - little helped by Hizbullah secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's public statements of solidarity with the Syrian regime. But perhaps most worrying for Hizbullah's leadership is its knowledge that the party cannot return to where it was before July 12, 2006, when the war with Israel began - at least without pushing the Lebanese political system perilously closer to war. For one thing is absolutely clear: Without some sort of Syrian return to Lebanon, and even then, Hizbullah has no future as simultaneously a political and military party.

For years, pundits and analysts have spoken of Hizbullah's "integration into Lebanese society." Their underlying premise was that the party somehow desired this. Optimists pointed to Hizbullah's participation in successive parliamentary elections as an example of its willingness to "assimilate." The naivete deployed was remarkable. It rarely occurred to the experts that Hizbullah did not start as, nor truly is, a social services organization. It is an Iranian-financed military and security enterprise overseeing a vast and competent patronage system designed to win Shiite backing, allowing Hizbullah to retain its weapons. It never occurred to the experts that Hizbullah's objective in participating in the political system was not to jettison its military identity, but rather to safeguard it within the confines of Lebanese institutions it could thereafter influence. And it never occurred to the experts that Hizbullah was not interested in integration at all, at least on terms that would require surrendering its autonomy, even if it readily exploited its stake in the state as an additional means of patronage, much like other Lebanese political actors.


These conditions no longer apply in Lebanon. With the society divided, Hizbullah cannot impose its conditions as it once did. This, Nasrallah knows. At the same time, the party's officials are too astute not to recognize that a return of Syrian domination, while it might buy Hizbullah a new lease on life, is more likely to lead to a Sunni-Shiite war, its end result, in all probability, being the collapse of Assad's regime, which would not be able to resist sectarian discord coming from Lebanon. That leaves a third option: Hizbullah's embrace of the Lebanese system through an agreement to disarm and transform itself from a Leninist political-military party into solely a political one deferring to democratic rules.

None of these choices appeals to Hizbullah. This is why it is trying to avoid a decision by taking over effective control of the government, to better determine who will be elected president once Emile Lahoud's term ends. Hizbullah's demand for 11 ministers out of 30 must be understood in this context, as an instrument to bring the government down, or threaten to, and use this as leverage to choose a friendly president. If the party and Syria can influence the presidency, and given the fact that they already rule over Parliament through Berri, this would allow them to hold Lebanon hostage in the coming years and rebuild the political and military infrastructure that was the basis of their intimidation.

That's why both Syria and Hizbullah were especially alarmed with statements from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's entourage last week, that the UN was working on defining the Shebaa Farms border, whether Syria agreed with this or not. If the international organization sets final boundaries and persuades Israel to withdraw, Hizbullah will have even less of an excuse to hold on to its arms. More worrying for the Syrians, this would sever any remaining linkage between a resolution of Lebanon's territorial dispute with Israel and Syria's. Syria would no longer be able to link the military neutralization of the Lebanese-Syrian border area to an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights.

Perhaps Pelosi and other foreign officials will understand this simple equation one day, after again failing to persuade Assad to sell Hizbullah out. Unfortunately, foreign bigwigs come to town, their domestic calculations in hand; then they leave, and we're left picking up the pieces.


Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.

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Our view on foreign policy: Pelosi steps out of bounds on ill-conceived trip to Syria

Bush’s no-talk policy is flawed, but speaker’s tactics are no solution.

~ USA Today

Democrats in Congress have been busy flexing their foreign policy muscles almost from the moment they took power in January, for the most part responsibly. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crossed a line this week by visiting Syria, where she met with President Bashar Assad. She violated a long-held understanding that the United States should speak with one official voice abroad — even if the country is deeply divided on foreign policy back home.

Like it or not (and we do not), President Bush's policy has been to refuse to negotiate with Syria until it changes its behavior. That behavior is malignant. Syria has long meddled destructively in neighboring Lebanon and is widely seen as the bloody hand behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Syria has aligned itself with Iran and supports the violently anti-Israel groups Hezbollah and Hamas. It foments violence in Iraq by allowing suicide bombers and jihadists to cross the Syria-Iraq border.

Pelosi surely knew that as speaker — third in the succession line to the presidency — her high-profile presence in Damascus would be read as a contradiction of Bush's no-talkpolicy. No matter that she claimed to have stuck closely to administration positions in her conversations with Assad, smiling photos of Pelosi and the Syrian president convey the unspoken message that while the U.S. president is unwilling to talk with Syria, another wing of the government is. Assad made good use of the moment.

Also along was House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., who said the meeting was "only the beginning of our constructive dialogue with Syria, and we hope to build on this visit." That suggested Democrats are going beyond unobjectionable fact-finding and getting-to-know-you conversation into something closer to negotiations, undermining U.S. diplomacy.

If there's any justification for Pelosi's trip, it is that foreign travel by members of Congress is important. Many come to office with little knowledge of the world and soon need to make important decisions about it. This was starkly evident in December when the congressman Pelosi chose to head the critical House Intelligence Committee revealed that he didn't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites — knowledge critical to understanding Iraq and the war on terrorism.

The speaker presumably is better informed. Pelosi said she made the trip because the bipartisan Iraq Study Group urged greater engagement with Syria. That argument is strengthened by the fact that Assad also got visits this week from several House Republicans, who defied White House requests they not go. "I don't care what the administration says on this," said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. "I want us to be successful in Iraq. I want us to clamp down on Hezbollah."

But Wolf can travel to Syria virtually undetected. Pelosi has an international profile. That guarantees her heavy media coverage but multiplies the price of a misstep, which she quickly made when she created confusion about how eager Israel is to resume peace talks with Syria. Israel immediately clarified her remarks.

Pelosi's office defended her trip by noting that the "administration's cold-shoulder approach has yielded nothing but more Syrian intransigence." As true as that is, the place for Pelosi to make the case is not in Damascus. It's not up to the speaker to unfreeze relations with Assad.

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Pelosi Abroad
The new speaker stumbles in Syria.
by Fred Barnes

SOMETHING GETS INTO political leaders when they take over Congress. It makes them think they can run Washington and the government from Capitol Hill. So they overreach, but it never works. Republicans tried it in 1995 and were slapped down by President Clinton in the fight over the budget and a government shutdown. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is operating as if she rules much more than just the House of Representatives. This includes having her own foreign policy, a sure recipe for trouble.

Indeed, trouble is exactly what she's created on her first trip overseas in her position as next in succession for the presidency, behind the vice president. Pelosi's visit to Damascus for talks with Syrian president Bashir Assad showed her ill-equipped to deal with the longstanding conflict between Israel and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East. She made three serious mistakes.

Pelosi got off on the wrong foot by stating beforehand her belief that "the road to Damascus is a road to peace." Not true. In the struggle between Israelis and Arabs, the road to Damascus has not been a path to peace--quite the contrary. In fact, Assad and his father, who preceded him as president, have never made more than a minimal effort to reach a peace settlement with Israel.

Pelosi seemed to think it would be easy to get the Israelis and Syrians together at the bargaining table. It's not and never has been. The complicated nature of diplomacy in the Middle East eluded her. She was in
way over her head. She didn't understand what she was dealing with. This was her first big mistake.

She said she carried an overture for peace talks from Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert to Assad, thinking this was new and significant. But the Olmert message consisted merely of a re-statement of the venerable Israeli position that talks could begin once Syria halted its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, terrorist groups who target Israelis. And there were other Israeli conditions. There was nothing new in this. It was an offer Syria was bound to refuse. In response, Assad offered his boilerplate response. And Pelosi appeared to think that was significant, too. She said Syria was poised to "resume the peace process." But Syria wasn't ready to do so on terms acceptable to Israel.

Her second mistake was believing the conventional wisdom in Washington that headway could be made with the Syrians if only we'd talk to them. This was the advice of the Iraq Study Group and the foreign policy establishment. But the Bush administration had already tried talking to the Syrians--for five years, in fact--and gotten nowhere. Pelosi also got nowhere.

In place of talking, the Bush administration has adopted a strategy of isolating Syria to see if that might make the Syrians more accommodating. This might work someday, but it hasn't yet, particularly because Syria is hardly isolated. Diplomats from Europe come for sit-downs with Assad and so have members of Congress (with less rank than Pelosi). These talks have produced nothing.

Pelosi's third (and biggest) mistake was thinking she could broker a peace between Israel and Syria. This was naive in the extreme. "We expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria," she said. Democrat Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accompanied Pelosi and said they could "build" on the meeting with Assad.

Build what? A rival American policy in the Middle East to the Bush administration's. That would surely be counterproductive, with cunning players like the Syrians playing the Bush administration off against the Pelosi camp--at the expense of Israel and also at the cost of coherence in America's approach to the Middle East.

The saving grace in Pelosi's meddling is that she probably hasn't done much harm, except to her reputation. That won't be true in Iraq, however, if her foray into military strategy with timetables for troop withdrawals becomes law. That could wipe out America's best chance for winning in Iraq--pursuing counterinsurgency tactics to secure Baghdad. That would be overreaching with a distinctly harmful impact.

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Pelosi Is Our Neville Chamberlain
~ Ronald Kessler

With her trip to Syria, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi achieved two things: She undercut her own credibility in Washington, and she spotlighted what is wrong with the Democrats' approach to national security.

The spectacle of Pelosi making nice with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and accepting at face value his claim that he is ready to "resume the peace process" with Israel had a large portion of official Washington tittering.

At the same time, Syrian authorities were telling the local press that there had been no change in its position. And Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Pelosi that "a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar al-Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel."

Moreover, Pelosi misrepresented Israel's position to Assad, announcing that she had delivered a message from Olmert that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria. Olmert quickly issued a statement denying that.

Even the Washington Post saw through the charade.

"Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda," an editorial in the paper said. The editorial added that "Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish."

While that is certainly true, the specter of Pelosi naively chatting with Assad and announcing that she had helped achieve a diplomatic breakthrough also highlights all that is wrong with the Democrats' approach to foreign policy today.

Syria hosts the exiled leadership of Hamas, as well as other Palestinian radical groups, and is a major supplier of funds to Hezbollah. Syria is also believed to be involved in the assassination of Lebanese political figures and allowing its territory to be used by jihadists fighting against the United States-led coalition and the coalition-backed government in Iraq.

Pelosi's willingness to undercut the president and accept the word of the chief of state of a sponsor of terrorism is on a par with the Democrats' effort to set a timetable for fighting the war in Iraq. It brings to mind the efforts of Joseph P. Kennedy, the founder of the Kennedy dynasty, to appease Adolf Hitler.

As ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joe Kennedy met on June 13, 1938 with Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador. The two got along famously, and Dirksen later reported on the conversation in great detail to Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, the German state secretary.

According to that report, Kennedy confided to the German ambassador that Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, was anxious to have some sort of settlement with Germany. By saying this, he undercut Great Britain's negotiating position with Hitler. Moreover, Kennedy said President Roosevelt was not anti-German and wanted friendly relations with Hitler. However, no European leader spoke well of the Germans because most of them were "afraid of the Jews" and did not "dare to say anything good about Germany..." Kennedy stated.

Even as the two met at the German embassy in London, Hitler was planning to gobble up most of Europe and exterminate the Jews. The following year, World War II began after Hitler invaded Poland.

"Speaker Pelosi is the Neville Chamberlain of our time," said Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist who was an aide in the Bush White House. "Cowering to and appeasing the dictator of a terrorist state was a disgrace to the high office she holds. The Sryians used this visit to validate their bad behavior by propagandizing the whole visit and her anti-war stance."

The Pelosi visit underscores that, when it comes to dealing with our enemies, the Democrats live in a dream world. Yet when another terrorist attack occurs in the U.S., they will be the first to say President Bush did not do enough to protect the country.

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Pelosi undermines foreign policy
By Brian Mosely

After last November's election, I wrote that the climate in Congress would likely move to the far left, but this writer never dreamed that the Speaker of the House would try to dangerously undermine this nation's foreign policy.
But that's exactly what Nancy Pelosi has done by taking off and sitting down with one of this planet's more reprehensible monsters, namely Syrian president and terror supporter Bashar Assad.

Syria is not our friend. They have been allowing huge amounts of weapons to be moved from its borders to the Lebanese-based Hezbollah militia and they have been suspected of supporting the insurgency against our troops in Iraq. Syria has also been blamed for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, supports Hamas and Hezbollah and is considered a puppet of Iran.

These aren't the type of folks you want to sit down and have tea with, but that didn't stop the Speaker. Pelosi spoke of breaking through the marble ceiling when she ascended to her new role as the first female House Speaker, but she should have worn a helmet, because her brain was obviously addled by the impact.

Even the left-leaning Washington Post called Pelosi's unauthorized trip "foolish" and "ludicrous." Unfortunately, they left out the part about it being unconstitutional and a gross violation of the Logan Act.

The whole trip seemed designed for one thing: To spite President Bush. These days, it's the overriding motivation for everything the Democrats do. It is obvious that Pelosi's main purpose in visiting Syria was to undermine the administration by advertising American disunity in a time of war.

They even admitted it. Congressman Tom Lantos, who tagged along with Pelosi, said: "We have an alternative, Democratic foreign policy."

Not only did she foul the waters for the State Department, she also interfered in the strained relations between two other countries. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office flatly denied that they had ever relayed a message via Pelosi accepting Syrian calls to renew peace negotiations, as she claimed.

What was even more ridiculous were comments made during her visit to Saudi Arabia. Pelosi actually asked Saudi officials why there were no female politicians in that country. Considering the brutal habits of the misogynic Saudis toward the fairer sex, they will probably take her ill-advised attempt at "diplomacy" as confirmation of their belief that women are too stupid to serve as politicians.

Pelosi did receive from praise for her trip, but it wasn't from people I'd want supporting my position.

"Pelosi's visit to Syria was very brave. She is a brave woman." That was according to Jihad Jaara, who is a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group. He's also the fellow that led the infamous 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.

More praise came from Khaled Al-Batch, who is a militant and spokesman for Islamic Jihad. "Nancy Pelosi understands the area well, more than Bush and Dr. (Condoleeza) Rice," said Al-Batch told WorldNetDaily. "If the Democrats want to make negotiations with Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah, this means the Democratic Party understands well what happens in this area and I think Pelosi will succeed. ... I hope she wins the next elections."

The other support came from former president Jimmy Carter, but this shouldn't surprise us, since Pelosi is using the same foolish foreign policy promoted in the late 1970s that has given us the world we live in today.

Jimmy had a lot of help in those days in creating this mess. When the Shah of Iran was on his way out, mainly due to Carter's lack of support, the chief of staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, William Miller, said that we had nothing to fear from the Ayatollah Khomeini, claiming he would be a "progressive force for human rights."

United Nations envoy Andrew Young called the Muslim holy man a "20th-Century saint" and U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan even compared Khomeini to Mahatma Gandhi. But for real breathtaking naiveté, you will have to look at what political scientist Richard Fisk wrote in the New York Times on Feb. 16, 1979, after Khomeini seized power.

"He [Khomeini] has been depicted in a manner calculated to frighten. The depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false. His close advisers are uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals ... who share a notable record of concern with human rights. What is distinctive about his vision is the concern with resisting oppression and promoting social justice. Many non-religious Iranians talk of this period as Islam's finest hour. Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a Third World country."

And when 60 hostages were taken at the American embassy, liberal clergymen from this county saved their sympathy for the Iranians. William Sloane Coffin of New York's Riverside Church faulted the hostages for "self pity" and urged them to hold hands with their captors and sing. I'll bet I could name that tune, too.

Pelosi's latest actions reminds one of the preacher in the classic 1953 film version of "The War of the Worlds," who walks out to greet the Martians in peace and is promptly incinerated for his troubles. However, in real life, it won't be politicians like Pelosi who will catch a heat ray in the face.

It will be us.

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April 09, 2007
Pelosi's Proposition: Bush is the Problem
By Michael Barone

"We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared after her visit to Syria and her meeting with its hereditary dictator Bashir Assad last week. "We expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria."

The woman second in line for the presidency (after Vice President Dick Cheney) seemed to believe she was on a Henry Kissinger-like shuttle diplomacy mission from Jerusalem to Damascus.

But Henry Kissinger she ain't. Pelosi said she was delivering a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria. A seeming breakthrough. Not so, said a statement speedily issued by Olmert's office. It said that Olmert had not made "any change in the policies of Israel."

Pelosi said Assad indicated he was ready to "resume the peace process." That wasn't the impression other members of Congress took away from their meeting with him a few days earlier. Syria under Assad pere et fils has steadfastly refused to make peace with Israel, despite diplomatic efforts considerably more assiduous than Pelosi is in a position to undertake. Bill Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, traveled the road to Damascus to meet with the elder Assad 22 times. End product: nada.

The Washington Post, not a backer of all Bush policies, called Pelosi's road-to-Damascus statement "ludicrous." "As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri." The Post concluded, "Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish."

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, who accompanied Pelosi, has defended her without addressing the Post's conclusion about her claims to have set Israel and Syria on "a road to peace." In USA Today, he noted that she "publicly declared that she supports the administration's goals regarding Syria." He said he and she are "convinced that direct communication with Syria's leader cannot worsen Syrian behavior. Rather, over time, it may just lead to improvement."

That's dubious. Coming in "friendship" to Damascus may make Assad more confident he has a free hand in Lebanon, and "may just" doesn't sound very promising. But the bigger issue here is the thinking that gave Pelosi confidence she could produce progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

At the heart of that thinking is this proposition: We're the problem. America, or rather George W. Bush, is the problem. We're not doing enough to get the Israelis and Syrians together; we're not doing enough to address the grievances of the Palestinian people (than whom "nobody is suffering more," according to Barack Obama); we're not doing enough to mollify the dictators who are working against us.

Akin to this is the feeling shared by most Democrats and, it seems, by most American voters, that if we can just get our troops out of Iraq all will be well in the world.

I recall reading a few weeks ago an article on Democratic fund raising that quoted a woman as saying that "we were very safe under the Clinton administration." No, we weren't "very safe" -- we just thought we were. Bill Clinton knew we weren't "very safe," and he took some steps -- unfortunately, not enough -- to make us safer.

You can say the same of George W. Bush during first eight months in office. There are evil leaders out there -- the mullahs of Iran, Assad and his thugs, Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and his pal Fidel Castro -- who hate the United States and want to do us as much damage as they can.

They don't hate us just because the Republican Congress didn't raise the minimum wage or because George W. Bush has a stubborn streak and speaks with a West Texas accent. They hate us because of our freedoms and because we have worked to export those freedoms around the world.

Friendship, hope and a determination to be on the road to peace are not enough to protect us in this world. A speedy exit from Iraq might make many Americans less unsettled while watching cable news -- for a while. But it wouldn't make us safer. It will just leave us more likely to face the kind of surprise we had on Sept. 11, 2001.

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So I take it that you're not pleased about this?

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The Pelosi Democrats' Moral Confusion
by David Limbaugh

In our outrage over Nancy Pelosi's unconstitutional and, according to some legal experts, criminal attempt to steal the reins of American foreign policy from President Bush, let's not tacitly give her a pass for her egregiously wrongheaded assertion that "the road to Damascus is a road to peace."

Apparently Pelosi believes: a) that the terrorist-sponsoring Syrian regime is a nation of good will, whose leaders are reasonable and interested in resolving disputes through peaceful dialogue, and b) that the U.S. policy of isolating Syria and refusing to negotiate with its leaders until it renounces its support of terrorism is wrong.

How is this different from the Pelosi liberals' position concerning endless "negotiations" with Saddam Hussein? To them, it didn't seem to matter that he had violated umpteen U.N. resolutions and was openly defying weapons inspectors. They always wanted to extend the time for diplomacy and defer the use of force.

Their mindset toward Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no different. They believe he can be reasoned with and that his grievances can be addressed through jawboning. We are the unreasonable ones, not Ahmadinejad, for refusing to engage in bilateral talks with him.

Underlying this liberal penchant for diplomacy at all costs is the assumption that these dictators have legitimate grievances against the United States, that they are prepared to negotiate in good faith and that they desire peace on other than their own nefarious terms.

But are they in good faith? Neither the Bush administration nor the administration of Israel's Ehud Olmert believes so. They say that as long as Syria is supporting and supplying our terrorist enemies in Iraq and in bed with Hamas and Hezbollah, there is no point in negotiating.

The Bush and Olmert administrations understand that a terrorist is a terrorist, and terrorists don't believe in true, give-and-take negotiations. Otherwise, they wouldn't be terrorists.

If Pelosi and her cohorts actually believe Syria has any shred of a legitimate moral basis to support flagrantly terrorist organizations, perhaps they could let us in on the secret.

Do they sympathize with Syrian President Bashar Assad's causes? Do they believe one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter? Or do they concede that Assad sponsors terrorism, but think he can be sweet-talked out of it?

For Pelosi to take it upon herself, in defiance of presidential authority, to approach Assad as if he were the reasonable one and the United States were militant and intransigent is simply unconscionable. For her to prop him up as a prospective peace partner is something out of "The Twilight Zone."

Then again, no matter how much the global scenery changes, many things remain the same, and one of those things is the liberal mindset toward evil regimes and dealing with them through sheer diplomacy -- as opposed to confronting them from a position of strength with the express or implied use of force.

Liberals advocated this very same approach to our last global enemy: the communists. In their minds, there was always a rough moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union, especially concerning the arms race. The Soviets weren't so much an evil regime bent on destroying the United States and world domination as they were reacting defensively to our jingoistic nuclear proliferation. If we would just quit provoking them and unilaterally reduce our armaments, the Soviets would follow suit.

Even after history has repudiated the liberals' approach and vindicated Reagan conservatives, liberals still insist on romanticizing former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Truth be told, they credit Gorbachev more than Reagan for the end of the Cold War, even though Gorbachev was dragged kicking and screaming toward that end.

At the root of the liberals' misguided notion that evil can be eradicated by talking it to death and that evil dictators are honorable and susceptible to good-faith overtures is their pervasive moral confusion.

How can we expect any different from those who supported the Nicaraguan Sandinistas against true freedom fighters, who lionize Fidel Castro, who believe al-Qaida prisoners when they accuse Americans of torture and who can't even seem to remember how bad things were in Iraq under Saddam Hussein?

If we think it's bad having Nancy Pelosi as the shadow commander in chief, can you imagine if one of her ilk were actually elevated to the real job? Perish the thought.

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Pelosi Plays to America’s Enemies
Her enemy is right here at home
By Mark I

Fresh off her oh!-so-successful trip to the Middle East, Speaker of the House, and America’s Mother-in-Law™, Nancy Pelosi now says she may schedule a return visit. Only this time, she will not be playing in off-off Broadway locations like Damascus and Riyadh, she’s looking to play the big time in Tehran, Iran. That’s right, Speaker Pelosi would be open to paying a personal visit to America’s enemy number one, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and performing her one grandma diplomacy and dialogue show for him personally. Now, she’s not saying that outright, but she’s not exactly closing the door.

Read on…


Pelosi’s interest in visiting Iran was revealed in a press conference held yesterday in her home district of San Francisco.

The Democratic speaker from San Francisco and [Rep. Tom] Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, were asked at a news conference in San Francisco on Tuesday whether on the heels of their recent trip to the Middle East they would be interested in extending their diplomacy in the troubled region with a visit to Iran.

"Speaking just for myself, I would be ready to get on a plane tomorrow morning, because however objectionable, unfair and inaccurate many of (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's) statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him,'' Lantos said. "Speaking for myself, I'm ready to go -- and knowing the speaker, I think that she might be.''

Pelosi did not dispute that statement, and noted that Lantos -- a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust -- brought "great experience, knowledge and judgment" to the recent bipartisan congressional delegation trip to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in addition to Syria.

"I find the president of Iran's remarks to be so repulsive that they are outside the circle of civilized human behavior,'' Pelosi said, referring to Ahmadinejad's past comments that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map and his questioning of the existence of the Holocaust.

"But a person of Mr. Lantos' stature and personal experience is saying that -- even as a Holocaust survivor and even recognizing the outrageous statements of the president of Iran -- it's important to have dialogue. I think that speaks volumes." (my emphasis)

Seems to me that Lantos wasn’t just speaking for himself, he was speaking for the Speaker.

Meanwhile, back in that backwater capital of Washington DC, Pelosi’s enemy number one, President Bush, has called for Congressional leaders to visit the White House next week. Pelosi has refused. Saying that the president was inviting Democratic Congressional leaders to, “accept without any discussion the bill that he wants,” and calling that, “not worthy of the concerns of the American people,” she joined her Senate counterpart, Sen. Harry Reid, in rejecting out of hand the invitation from the President of the United States.

The bill the president wants to discuss is the emergency war funding supplemental. The bill provides funding for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and would prevent the Pentagon from being forced to curtail funding for training and equipment maintenance in order to continue to fund troops in harm’s way in those two countries. Pelosi and Reid have placed a precondition on any meeting with the president over the issue. They say that the president must be willing to consider a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq before a meeting can take place. Otherwise, they say, there is nothing to talk about.

But for Ahmadinejad, there are no such preconditions. It is important to have a dialogue with him, “even recognizing the outrageous statements,” he has made. No retractions necessary. In fact, one gets the impression that the more outrageous his statements get, the more Pelosi will think it important to talk to Ahmadinejad. If Pelosi truly believed that Ahmadinejad’s statements are so repulsive that they are, “outside the circle of civilized human behavior,” why leave the door open to a civilized act like having a meeting with him? Why would she grace his country by even considering a visit at the same time she is refusing to meet with the president of her own country over funding for troops who are the targets of Iranian intelligence units in Iraq?

Two reasons: because for all her posturing, she doesn’t really care about the troops; and because America’s security isn’t as important to her as making President Bush look bad. There is no other reason for the Speaker of the House to meet independently with America’s enemies, especially an enemy who is actively seeking to kill United States troops, except to undermine the Administration that is waging war against that enemy. It doesn’t even matter what she may say to Ahmadinejad. Nor does it matter what the outcome of such a meeting may be. She could parrot all of the Administration’s talking points and positions. She could emerge with no substantive agreement. The very fact that the meeting took place at all legitimizes the enemy, their tactics, and the need for more meetings. And that undermines the strategy the Administration is pursuing of trying to isolate Iran. Worse, it emboldens Iran to be more aggressive in its attacks against our troops.

So, Speaker Pelosi, while you consider your next flight halfway around the world to meet the president of Iran, President Bush sits one and a half miles down Pennsylvania Avenue, waiting for you to call on him. Pick your president, Speaker. Pick which world leader is worthy of your road show paying a visit. Is it the one trying to protect America and provide for her troops with the funding they need, or the one trying to harm America and kill her troops with slugs of molten copper? Choose wisely, Speaker. It’s not just your base in the audience now. It’s the whole world. You’re playing on the big stage.

[achebeautiful]

Pelosi, Lantos may be interested in diplomatic trip to Iran
Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, just back from a trip to Syria that sparked sharp criticism from Republicans and the Bush administration, suggested Tuesday that they may be interested in taking another diplomatic trip - to open a dialogue with Iran.

The Democratic speaker from San Francisco and Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, were asked at a press conference in San Francisco Tuesday whether on the heels of their recent trip to the Middle East they would be interested in extending their diplomacy in the troubled region with a visit to Iran.

"Speaking just for myself, I would be ready to get on a plane tomorrow morning, because however objectionable, unfair and inaccurate many of (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's) statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him,'' Lantos said. "Speaking for myself, I'm ready to go -- and knowing the speaker, I think that she might be.''

Pelosi did not dispute that statement, and noted that Lantos -- a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust -- brought "great experience, knowledge and judgment" to the recent bipartisan congressional delegation trip to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in addition to Syria.

"I find the president of Iran's remarks to be so repulsive that they are outside the circle of civilized human behavior,'' Pelosi said, referring to Ahmadinejad's past comments that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map and his questioning of the existence of the Holocaust.

"But a person of Mr. Lantos' stature and personal experience is saying that -- even as a Holocaust survivor and even recognizing the outrageous statements of the president of Iran -- it's important to have dialogue. I think that speaks volumes.''

Pelosi was criticized by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the administration for meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, who the administration said has meddled in the politics and fomented violence in Iraq and Lebanon and is a state sponsor of terrorism. Other Republicans, however, also visited Syria during the current congressional recess. One of those lawmakers, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), visited Syria a day after the Pelosi delegation and said the Bush administration should be talking with Assad as a way of trying to bring peace to the region.

The president also has tried to isolate Iran, saying its government, too, has aided attacks against Americans in Iraq and elsewhere while ramping up its efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Lantos said that for more than a decade, he has been trying to obtain a visa to visit Tehran with the help of former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan -- and to date neither he nor any other member of Congress has been successful.

Pelosi said that throughout the congressional delegation's recent Middle East trip, "every place we went we had a constant message: the safety and security of Israel, fighting terrorism.''

"There was, of course, a shadow over all of it, Iran: Iran's support of terrorist groups is something that must be stopped,'' she said. "Iran's quest for a nuclear weapon is something that must not happen and we must stop them with the strongest of diplomatic measures.''

Lantos noted that "with the speaker's support,'' he has co-sponsored legislation in the House that calls for making available to all countries -- including Iran -- nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes under international oversight by establishing a "nuclear fuel bank."

"So if the Iranian president says that he is developing (nuclear material) for peaceful purposes, we are assisting him in that process,'' said Lantos, who anticipated the legislation could pass as early as May.

[achebeautiful]

Pelosi said that throughout the congressional delegation's recent Middle East trip, "every place we went we had a constant message: the safety and security of Israel, fighting terrorism.''

You wouldn't happen to have any transcripts available to us of your dialogue on this Middle East tour of yours, would you, Nancy?

[achebeautiful]

Syrian Reformers Say Pelosi Visit 'Chilling'
Exile party asserts Dems 'flushing away' efforts to help oppressed in Middle East

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's unauthorized diplomacy in the Middle East, including a gesture of peace toward the terrorist-supporting Damascus regime, is having a "chilling" effect on reformers in the region, charges a Syrian political party in exile.

"For Nancy Pelosi to cajole with Assad who has facilitated the killing of American soldiers is a travesty," declared the Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based opposition party to the Assad regime that says it formed as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Five years of investment by the U.S. State Department and the Bush administration in organizations and people who have committed their lives to helping their oppressed countries is being flushed away by the Democrats in Congress who, with the visit of Pelosi to Syria, have shown that they favor the stability of dictatorships to freedom even if they had a direct hand in killing American troops in Iraq," the party said in a statement.

The party said it "wants to remind all the Democrats in Congress what Assad has been up to in building terrorist bases in Syria."

While many Democrats are aware, because of the intelligence they receive, the U.S. public has not been informed Assad has built four different bases in Syria to train terrorists to send them to Iraq, the statement said.

"Nancy Pelosi's disingenuous attempt at extending a lifeline to the Assad regime by visiting him when the Bush administration is on the brink of successfully breaking him down through pressure and isolation demonstrates how much we can trust the Democrats to do the right thing when it comes to the security of the U.S." the party asserted.

As WND reported, Pelosi's trip to Damascus last week might be a felony under the Logan Act, according to a former State Department official. The Logan Act, initiated by President John Adams in 1798, makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States," to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government's behavior on any "disputes or controversies with the United States," points out Robert F. Turner, former acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs.

Pelosi told reporters that during her talks Wednesday with Assad she "determined that the road to Damascus is the road to peace."

"We came in friendship, hope," she said.

The House speaker also said she conveyed an Israeli message to Assad that the Jewish state was ready to resume peace talks. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quickly issued a denial, however, stating Israel's policy toward Syria has not changed.

WND reported members of terrorist organizations whose top leaders live in Syria called Pelosi's Damascus visit "brave" and "very appreciated," saying it could bring about "important changes" to America's foreign policy, including talks with "Middle East resistance groups."