Pelosi's Middle East shuttle

Michael Barone:

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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 International Affairs Committee Tom Lantos, who accompanied Pelosi, has defended her, without addressing the Post's conclusion that 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.

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The Democrats do ache to return to the failed policies of the Clinton administration. Perhaps they will get their chance in a couple of years, but they clearly will not make anyone safer. The retreat from Mogadishu did not make us safer nor will a similar retreat from Baghdad make us safer.

Demcorats have been trying to cover their calls for retreat by suggesting that the enemy we face in Baghdad and Iraq will not follow us home. They still do not understand the enemy. The guys in Mogadishu did not follow us home either but the people helping them continued to plot against us and killed people in embassies and on the USS Cole before they came to America, but come they did and come they will if we let up on the pressure and remove the force in Iraq that is currently distracting them.