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.The author is just getting started...read the whole thing here.
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.
Nancy Pelosi and Dave Hobson should leave the shuttle diplomacy to the professionals in the State Department. They aren't my favorite people on the planet, but at least they know what they are doing.
My favorite line comes at the end:
[F]oreign bigwigs come to town, their domestic calculations in hand; then they leave, and we're left picking up the pieces.Foreign affairs is better left with the grown ups...
