A shadow foreign policy

There is a reason why our system has one person in charge of foreign policy - doing otherwise means that our allies and enemies don't know whose statements of policy to listen to. The Democrats in Congress seem to want to set up their own separate foreign policy and to signal to the rest of the world that they can ignore President Bush for the next 21 months and just hold out for the Democrats to take over complete control of foreign policy. As the Wall Street Journal writes today, that is exactly what Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are trying to do. Reid has said that he'll try to pass a bill to defund the war a year from now. Nancy Pelosi is traveling around the Middle East telling leaders that they should be aware that the Democrats have a different policy from Bush.

Mr. Lantos probably got closer to their real intentions when he told reporters that "this is only the beginning of our constructive dialogue with Syria, and we hope to build on it." The Pelosi cavalcade is intended to show that if only the Bush Administration would engage in "constructive dialogue," the Syrians, Israelis and everyone else could all get along.

This is the same Syrian regime that has facilitated the movement of money and insurgents to kill Americans in Iraq; that has been implicated by a U.N. probe in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; and that has snubbed any number of U.S. overtures since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Perhaps if he works hard enough, Mr. Lantos can match the 22 visits to Damascus that Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Warren Christopher made in the 1990s trying to squeeze peace from that same stone.

In fact, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Lantos both voted for the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 that ordered Mr. Bush to choose from a menu of six sanctions to impose on Damascus. Mr. Bush chose the weakest two sanctions and dispatched a new Ambassador to Syria in a goodwill gesture in 2004. Only later, in the wake of the Hariri murder and clear intelligence of Syria's role in aiding Iraqi Baathists, did Mr. Bush conclude that Mr. Assad's real goal was to reassert control over Lebanon and bleed Americans in Iraq.

With her trip, Ms. Pelosi has now reassured the Syrian strongman that Mr. Bush lacks the domestic support to impose any further pressure on his country. She has also made it less likely that Mr. Assad will cooperate with the Hariri probe, or assist the Iraqi government in defeating Baathist and al Qaeda terrorists.

Thank you, Mrs. Pelosi.