Pelosi’s Syrian Escapade
Peter Brooks of the Heritage Foundation isn’t pleased with Speaker Nancy Pelosi running off to Syria for more than a typical Congressional fact finding mission. He thinks it muddles a consistent U.S. foreign policy, is Pelosi “freelancing” and is her getting too friendly with a rogue state.
Now, on the pages of the Wall Street Journal editorial page we have Robert Turner claiming Pelosi violated the Logan Act and should be prosecuted. Prosecutors can go after her after they indict the miles of former diplomats, businessmen, Congressmen, NGO staffers, and consultants who have discussed U.S. foreign policy without administration approval. Joel Klein gets it right for once,
Second, Pelosi did not make the trip to negotiate with Assad, but to talk with him. Third, this is not a “wartime” situation–in fact, we continue to have diplomatic relations with Syria. Fourth, as others have noted, numerous Republican members of Congress have gone to speak with Assad. In fact, it was a Republican, Chris Shayes, who first told me that I should go over and interview Assad.
The White House won’t “want to touch this political hot potato” (to use Turner’s words) because it’s outrageous on its face. The Logan Act is wonderfully vague. Writing a letter to the Chinese embassy in Washington demanding they better respect freedom of religion could constitute a violation. Imagine the political outcry from a Justice Department trying to prosecute Speaker Pelosi. Of course this is the Alberto Gonzalez-led Justice Department who bumbled the firings of eight U.S. Attorneys into a quasi-scandal.
Pelosi’s trip damaged American foreign policy in two ways. First, her bungling of the statement from Israel means they can’t trust her to do something fairly simple. Second, U.S. adversaries like Syria believe they can now use the wedge between the Bush White House and the opposition Democratic Congress to stymie efforts in Iraq and fighting terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. A USA Today editorial put it well,
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.
The idea of foreign policy differences ending at the ocean’s edge was tossed aside by a Democratic leader eager to weaken the President and push him sooner into lame duck status. Her Bush Derangement Syndrome couldn’t be confined to Capitol Hill; it had to spread overseas.
“… 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. ”
-USA Today
Um. So what? The above is a silly useless statement. “Talk” all you want, only the Prez&Co has the constitutional gonads to negotiate with foreign powers.
Further, since the entire world now understands what we here in the USofA knew well - that Pelosi is blabbering idiot - any bang Assad might have gotten by photo-opping with her is rendered rather moot. Indeed, Pelosi’s misrememberence shaped the entire vist and only made Assad look like he was hanging with low-rent, which he was.
He can’t be too happy with that.