I complained yesterday that US media have been reluctant to criticize Speaker Pelosi and her free-lance diplomatic mission to the Middle East. Today, however, USA Today and a column by former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Turner in the Wall Street Journal add new voices to that of the Washington Post editors (see yesterday's post) who are censuring the trip. Especially wrong was Pelosi's friendly demarche to Syria, giving comfort to a terror state that is opposed to the United States in regard to
Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran and just about everything else.
A fact finding trip would have been acceptable; Congressmen do that all the time. But attempting to convey a message that takes issue with current US policy--especially after the President publicly as well as privately discouraged the trip--is not only a blunder, but likely illegal. Robert Turner describes the long history of legislation and court cases that forbid such activity. The precedents go back two hundred years and the Marbury v. Madison case in which the first Chief Justice, John Marshall, opined that diplomatic dealings overseas exclusively are "powers entrusted to the executive."
I am against criminalizing policy differences, which the new Democratic majority in Congress has been doing in many instances. But in this case there is no question that a Speaker of the House does not have legal authority to conduct foreign policy. Period.
Put it another way, if this were a Republican Speaker defying a Democratic president in an overseas diplomatic demarche the US media not only would be tut-tuting the Speaker for bad form, but demanding a Special Counsel and prosecution under existing statutes.
At least USA Today realizes the gravity and makes the point that even though their own views are closer to Pelosi's than to President Bush's, this trip was bad for the country. This is not about Bush. It's about the dignity and effectiveness of the United States.
Our enemies are OUR enemies, not Republican enemies or Bush enemies. Why is that so hard to understand?
*In old-fashioned Islam, "Dhimmis" are useful infidels who are tolerated.
