From IBD:
Courier Of The House
Diplomacy: Not content with coddling Syria’s terrorist regime, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made a fool of herself pretending to be a messenger for Israel’s prime minister. But the Israelis were quick to expose the charade.
It seems that trying to take down President Bush isn’t enough for the Speaker of the House. On Wednesday, she tried to make Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert look so weak that he needed a U.S. congresswoman to carry messages to Israel’s sworn enemies for him.
After President Bashar al-Assad told her that Syria wants negotiations with Israel on the Golan Heights, Pelosi informed reporters in Damascus that the “meeting with the president enabled us to communicate a message from Prime Minister Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks as well.”
Before you could say “Hezbollah,” Olmert took issue with the speaker’s feeble attempt to mislead Americans into thinking she had Israel’s interests in mind in her visit.
A “clarification” issued by the prime minister’s office emphasized that Syria “continues to be part of the axis of evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East.” The use of President Bush’s famous term for countries like Syria that sponsor terror underlined the strength of Olmert’s rebuff to the senior Democrat.
Contrary to Pelosi’s assertions, Olmert’s statement made it clear that “what was communicated to the U.S. House speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel, as was communicated to other foreign leaders.”
So Pelosi not only gave Assad a false image of U.S. foreign policy, but of Israeli foreign policy as well.
Olmert reaffirmed that Syria has a long, long way to go before it will be welcomed at the negotiating table. “In order to conduct serious and genuine peace negotiations,” said the prime minister’s statement, “Syria must cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hezbollah and bringing about the destabilizing of Lebanon, cease its support of terror in Iraq, and relinquish the strategic ties it is building with the extremist regime in Iran.”
Anyone who thinks Nancy Pelosi showing up wearing a scarf around her head visiting a mosque will cause all that to happen won’t even make janitor in the foreign service.
Speaking of that scarf, one waggish Canadian commentator remarked that “given the maple leaf-studded head scarf she donned before entering a Syrian mosque yesterday, American House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have been an ambassador for Canada.”
She certainly represented the dovish foreign policy of the land of the maple leaf a lot more than that of a post-9/11 America leading a global war on terror.
As Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney remarked Wednesday at a campaign stop in Iowa, “Her going to a state which is without question a sponsor of terror, and having her picture taken with Assad and being seen in a head scarf and so forth is sending the wrong signal to the people of Syria and to the people of the Middle East.”
The former Massachusetts governor called it “a very bad idea to be carrying out a separate and independent foreign policy from the president of the United States.”
But the kind of Democrats now ruling the roost in Congress think nothing of placing politics above the national interest. The speaker went to Syria to show up President Bush by making it look like all he’s had to do for years now is stop being a hardliner, arrange for some face time with hostile Islamic governments and — voila! — there will be progress in the Middle East peace process.
Meanwhile, Pelosi refused to support our steadfast ally Britain by allowing the House vote on a resolution condemning Iran for taking British sailors hostage. Instead, she goes halfway around the world to coddle our enemy.
Luckily for America Nancy Pelosi’s incompetence means there’s been only one casualty so far from her independent foreign policy: the speaker’s ever-plummeting reputation.
From LGF:
Not even the Washington Post will defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s disgraceful trip to Syria, or her ludicrous statements about Syria’s readiness for “peace:”
Pratfall in Damascus — Nancy Pelosi’s foolish shuttle diplomacy
