Nancy Pelosi is at it again. In what Vice President Dick Cheney, President Bush, and even Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., would have you believe is in direct defiance of the administration and ultimately injurious to our nation's defense, Ms. Pelosi has just met with wannabe member of the Axis of Evil, Syria. Republicans are blasting the speaker for what they deem is her abject disregard for American interests, and a number even suggest that she may have violated the Logan Act, an obscure law that prohibits the average U.S. citizen from deal-making with foreign leaders. Speaker Pelosi's position as an elected official mostly protects her from prosecution under the act; however, accusations of defiance abound.
If this is defiance, we need more of it.
Speaker Pelosi is acting as if our founding fathers intended our government to have checks and balances. She's behaving as if there are different branches of government.
Oh, wait. They did, and there are.
With so much of America's interests tied up in Syria's sphere of influence, it does seem wise that we engage Syria in some form of dialogue.
Unfortunately, our current administration does not seem to think so.
Syria is considered to be sponsoring a number of well-armed insurgent groups in Iraq. Syria is also believed to be providing arms and assistance to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and is a benevolent supporter of Hamas in Palestine. A country with that many links to known terrorist groups really isn't trying its best to make a good impression or get a legitimate head start on stability in its region.
Any country responsible for the deaths of American troops should be held fully responsible, and Syria has been implicated in the deaths of American troops from Beirut to Baghdad. Not just satisfied with arming insurgent groups, Syria has also been implicated in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Get the picture? These are some bad guys. If Syria were your next-door neighbor, it'd be selling crack and AK-47s to questionable thug types out of its garage, and maybe even shooting your cat if it wandered out of the house.
"Why talk to a neighbor as bad as all that?" Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush seem to be asking Speaker Pelosi.
Ms. Pelosi, in opposition to the White House, seems to believe that the reasons Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush are choosing not to talk with Syria are the same reasons to talk with Syria.
President Bush has been trying to tie our behavior with Syria and other like-minded states into the overarching War on Terror. The horror of Sept. 11 introduced us to the incredible hatred that we are fighting in our global War on Terror. We got a good start in Afghanistan, gave a few people in Saudi Arabia a pass and then ended up in unwelcoming Iraq.
There is, of course, a second and less apparent approach to preventing the next 9/11: Winning the hearts and minds of the people who make up the milieu in which the next 9/11 hijackers are forming their opinion of the world. The arrogance and selectivity that many people in places like Iran and Syria ascribe to us can be better addressed if our presence in these countries is not limited to tendentious video clips complete with biased voiceovers. With the stakes so high, we can't afford the continuance of this policy of selective diplomatic isolation.
Can we trust the politicians and leaders in Syria to communicate American goodwill to their people, if only Syria would stop supporting all those terrorists? Can we trust a country that we have willingly isolated to educate its citizenry on why America really shouldn't be a target of hatred and vengeance? Can we be confident that countries we choose to ignore will buy into our ideas, and espouse peace, even unsolicited?
Can we afford to only be engaged with the Middle East militarily? Shouldn't we talk to these guys?
Something tells me the answer to those questions is the same answer to, "Did it work with North Korea or Cuba?"
Imagine if best-president-ever Ronald Reagan had chosen to follow up his whole "Evil Empire" thing with the Soviet Union with silence and diplomatic intransigence. Imagine if, throughout the entirety of the Cold War, we refused to engage Soviet Russia in diplomacy and dialogue. Cuba would be Russia's Taiwan, you and I would be well-versed in scrambling beneath our desks at the sound of an air-raid siren, and there'd still be a pretty big wall in Berlin.
While it should have been Condoleezza Rice wearing that sweet headscarf in Syria, be thankful that some high-ranking American official seems willing to engage our enemies in something other than tough-guy posturing. She's no Mr. Ronald Reagan just yet, but it seems that Speaker Pelosi is already doing the job of a president.
Gerald Cox ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics and Middle Eastern studies.
