I guess because Pelosi’s last trip was so well-received and all:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, just back from a trip to Syria that sparked sharp criticism from Republicans and the Bush administration, suggested Tuesday that they may be interested in taking another diplomatic trip – to open a dialogue with Iran.
The Democratic speaker from San Francisco and Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, were asked at a press conference in San Francisco Tuesday whether on the heels of their recent trip to the Middle East they would be interested in extending their diplomacy in the troubled region with a visit to Iran.
“Speaking just for myself, I would be ready to get on a plane tomorrow morning, because however objectionable, unfair and inaccurate many of (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s) statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him,’’ Lantos said. “Speaking for myself, I’m ready to go—and knowing the speaker, I think that she might be.’’
Pelosi did not dispute that statement, and noted that Lantos—a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust—brought “great experience, knowledge and judgment” to the recent bipartisan congressional delegation trip to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in addition to Syria.
Maybe. But what he didn’t bring was the wishes of the voters who put George Bush in charge of foreign policy.
As for “opening a dialogue with Iran” and Ahmadinejad, someone should explain to the liberal Democrats that two sides talking past each other is not so much opening a “dialogue” as it is engaging in the trappings of diplomacy for the sake of appearances—and leads only to propaganda victories for tyrants.
—Or, if you happen to be Kim Jong Il, dinner with Jimmy Carter and a dance with Madeleine Albright. Which, let’s face it—is still a small price to pay for getting your hands on some nukes.
****
(h/t Dan Riehl, via CJ Burch)
update: Like a virus it spreads! See also, Kesher Talk, Bob Owens, and Allahpundit, who writes:
Pelosi’s willing to violate constitutional law and American political custom by meeting with terrorists, but she’s not willing to meet with a bottom-feeding, cretinous Holocaust denier for fear of offending Jews. How does she negotiate the latter to facilitate the former? Simple: she takes Lantos with her. As a victim he’s beyond criticism, and thus so is she by association. That, of course, makes it a game of moral-authority poker where, in order to challenge her, we have to bet some “chips†of our own.
“Opening a dialog” for its own sake, without any negotiating position, is WORSE than doing nothing. It’s paying tribute to a perceived master.
Fookin’ obsequious morons.
He, but Lantos with Pelosi’s help wants to give all the crazies, including Iran nuclear fuel. BONUS ROUND, this effort will be run by an international “nuclear fuel bank.”
She’s working for the White House, right? I mean, this is actually a plot to destroy whatever shreds of foreign policy and national security credibility the Democrats have with the American people, isn’t it? And to make our enemies over-confident about America’s reactions to their provocations so that they slip up and give GWB an honest-to-goodness causus belli, right?
She really isn’t so dim that she thinks her visit to Syria was a rousing success, is she? Please tell me she isn’t actually the second coming of Jimmy Carter, Warren Christopher, and Cyrus Vance in pumps.
Please…
If she goes and is taken hostage, we stick with the policy of not negotiating with terrorist entities…right?!!
okay, so let me see if I have this right…
talking to Iranian president = Great Idea!
talking to American president = Stupid waste of time.
Cueing emmadine to come careening into the thread with her thoroughly debunked concept of a Constitutional role for Congress in foreign policy in 3 … 2 … 1 …
Maybe Nan just wants the State Department to be mothballed…
Wait a minute! Hmmmmm…..
Hey, you can’t say Pelosi doesn’t understand who her enemies really are. Or who her allies really are.
Can’t sHrillary get a part in this play . . . .
She knows that doing this weakens the US.
It’s the reason she does it.
maggie – By Jove, I think you’ve done it!
BTW – I see the 45th is going back over ~December ‘07/Jan ‘08. Maybe I can catch a ride if I get the call too.
that is correct Major John. and let’s just say there are some people trying to pressure RTO into going. um, developing….
so this funding thing makes me even angrier. if they want to defund the troops, fine. do it. just don’t be half-assed about it. and deal with the supposed minority that would be angry with them.
She’s taking Lantos so he can learn that there was really nothing for him to have survived.
So Nancy will meet with Ahmadinejad unconditionally, but not President Bush?
Oh – Instapundit linked along those lines here.
“See, we are not very different from you Mahmoud. We are trying to open a shadow government just like you have. However, we hijack our consititution instead of boats, airplanes and the like.”
I wonder what would have happened had Newt tried this kind of stunt with Clinton?
Also, I noticed that Carla failed to mention that, in addition to the White House, democrats have spoken out against the trip as well. And Lantos is a real piece of work….wanting to meet with a holocaust denier. Mind boggeling.
When you are caught doing something wrong you have two choices, never do it again, or repeat the act as soon as possible.
Pelosi is following standard Democrat procedure for whitewashing a gaffe, lather rinse repeat followed by calls to just ‘move on.’
I fired off an extremely angry email to Pelosi over her choice of meeting with Assad but not Bush. I don’t live in her district but I have lots of family and friends who do. Most of them are bleeding-heart lefties, but I might be able to sway a few votes before the next election.
I’m certainly willing to make the effort. I can’t stand her. She’s an embarassment. She shames her position and title. She’s traitorous.
Don’t knock “talking past each other.”
Clinton and Albright talk Kim into shutting down his plutonium producing reactor and locking up the plutonium he had already made.
Bush and Bolton, mistakenly thinking that Kim had started enriching uranium Iran-style, slap sanctions on him.
Kim gets his plutonium outta storage and turns it into nukes.
“Talking past each other” could have avoided yet another diplomacy triumph for the Bush team.
The cheese is in the goat. Mark the white bunion. Pickles aardvark zyzgy.
The gostok distims the doshes.
Let ‘em go.
Then revoke their passports for visiting a banned state.
Have a nice trip, Nance.
Alfee-
Black right begot? A mild raven harem dew. Into yonder Inuit “nappy-headed hos.” Beneficent maestro humbly hoopty lemonade skydive.
That’s it. The mind’s eye gets permanently blinded tonight. Maybe with some Beam forced through an old Plymouth radiator.
An excellent point. I hope alpo gets it.
You can claw out your mind’s eye.
You just need to use chopsticks.
Of course Kim locked up the plutonium. He said he did, didn’t he? His word is gold until those “eeeeevilll rethugs” are in charge.
You’re a gullible twat alphie.
Lets get this straight:
Pelosi will meet with dictators of terrorist-sponsoring nations who loathe the United States and deny the holocaust… but won’t meet with the President of the United States to discuss a military funding bill.
The GOP must be laughing with glee, they don’t even have to campaign. This is like watching lemmings pour over a cliff.
And the losers? The American people who have to choose between the GOP that laughs at them and spends their money with wild abandon while corrupting politics… and the Democrats who are one step away from rabid, foaming anti-Americanism and shred the constitution with every gesture.
Whee.
Albright? Damme dice lice. Fiesta ala wax. Gibber gibber meep meep glibber glibber freep, eh?
The geometry was all wrong!
Insert the obigatory “ignore the Alphole” here. No one with two brain cells can believe that mindless spew he left here.
Be nice to Nancy, or she might just start visiting all the refugees that have fled the democratic paradise Bush has turned Iraq into.
As the Democratic Congress has started to provide aid to these unfortunates, she has every right to start tourng the Iraqi refugee camps in Syria, Jordan and Iran to see how the money is being spent.
Its called oversight.
Careful, all! alphie’s about to give us his patented lecture on how North Korea’s nuclear program is the fault of the US opening of Japan in 1853!
Take it away, alphie!
Ooops, that should have read Take alphie Awaaaaayyy!!!
Hey, alphie:
A needle undergoes the unwise turntable. A men’s adventure swims on top of a deputy frog. On the other hand, will the ocean despair? But then again, the charged military dances around an oar.
We now return to our regularly scheduled PSA:
IGNORE THE ALPHTARD
“Mutants.”
“Trolls.”
“Mutants.”
“Trolls.”
“Mutant trolls?”
“I’ll buy that.”
But seriously, anyone want to lay odds that if they go, Nancy will get off the returning flight, wave a piece of paper and declare “peace in our time”?
Would that mean Nancy is Neville Chamberlain? But I thought monkyboy was Neville Chamberlain! And @!ph|3 is monkyboy, right?
{{{boggle}}}
Nah. Just his moral and intellectual heir.
At some point, very soon, Pelosi’s (and the Dem’s at large) antics are going to force Bush to either prosecute her ass under the Logan Act or turn over his balls to her “for safekeeping”.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t (sadly) believe it will be the latter.
It’s the dialectic, dammit! It’s the dialectic!
Each and every member of the left has a portable dialectic in their domiciles, and they stoke it with propaganda, lies, and contradictions to see if a new social order will emerge from its posterior!
Stalin used his to murder a few million Ukrainians, his wife, and the mayor of Moscow. Why, Lenin even managed to contract fatal syphilis using his! The old child-buggerer Mao created a trail of despoiled damsels using his dialectic, and Castro even managed to criticize ethanol’s impact on tortilla futures from the grave!
It explains all! It is all, to the left. Who needs facts, when the dialectic answers all?
Naturally. That and the tiny geometries of your feeling shoulders. You deep breakfast, you. They lynch ray’s like that, don’t they?
Oh she’ll claim she has no problem talking to the American President, as long as he does EXACTLY what she says. Wonder how that tact will go over with the Iranians? Probably about as well as it went with the Syrians.
As for Alphie:
Ridblat tollabat. Thing twang, shunt to the Northwest on a Tuesday in June. My dad tried to find it, but alas, it was never lost. Brush often? 49-12= A lovely shade of blue.
Considering we’ve been fighting, er, whomever it is we’re fighting for almost 6 years now (far longer than WWII lasted), the Neville Chamberlain comparison might be a touch nonsensical.
And Christopher gets it. This is exactly how I feel about our current diseased politics. We have no good choices any more.
Chanberville are was genuis am he is for six wars of year lost Adolf largess.
Sensical is it.
And now ALPHTARD’s alter-ego, Neville Chamberlain, appears to defend his past successes (and to discuss how the UK was cowering in 1938, b/c they were so outnumbered and outweighed by Germany).
Neville/ALPHTARD:
Its enlightened sorts a peer above the graphical overload. How does the extremist fear? A recovering bargain lies. The male metal calls the active statistic.
Remember: WW2 only started with the United States entered, and we’re fighting a war in Iraq, not rebuilding and pacifying pockets of resistance in a liberated nation.
The war ended when we defeated the Iraqi army and occupied the country. Anyone with a shred of historical learning knows that it takes years to calm a country down after winning, that it’s the extreme exception when things to smoothly. Even Senators Durbin and Hagel knew this in 2003, when they said this in a joint statement:
But who cares, right? That gets in the way of the ruthless drive for political power.
Just trying help out.
How ‘bout instead of Neville Chamberlain, you guys start calling any crazy talkers:
Rudolf Hess
(geezer)
Absolutely precious! BTW: You really haven’t truly lived until you’ve dialed up the dialectic. Especially with an appropriately chilled glass of Frothing Insinuationsâ„¢, the drink of choice when Re’thugs plot the mass murder of brown people.
Nonsensical? NONSENSICAL? Field green quantum porcupines channel bar code filigrees! FILIGREES!!! Champion monkeyboy anusproof scabbie? Quork conventions, n’est pas? Calamari plutonium midget brow poontang basketball.
Nonsensical protoplasm, nee?
Alphie
The war we are facing today has been going on for three decades not six years.
Your error is in believing this war is about Bush.
One of the days you’re going to have to come to grips with the fact that this war won’t cease when his term in office ends. All that anti-war paper mache, what an environmentally hazzardous waste.
Pelosi’s ‘peace in her time’ isn’t going to happen, especially if dialogue is looked upon as a means of defense against an enemy who hacks off heads. At the rate Iran is able to build its nukes, two years down the road isn’t out of line. Chamberlain returned with peace and two years later began the real bloodbath.
HA! Not so much on the low down with the slap hand bro. Monkey see what i’ms told. Besides, no matter where or when, plain straight honky lips with pimp of a nappy haired ho. starigh bust toofes out yo mouth and teabag you. Jermaine or his man down the street. you down with the clown?
Three deacdes, syn?
If you’re spinnin’ a fantasy, why not go all the way?
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!
Old Texas Turkey, I completely disagree. Whatever alphie western underlines the snobbery outside the trying bat. An advisory vowel hopes the ambitious barrier.
Given the decoding sequence, the rack trips on top of the wood. Remember the key! others73
syn:
Fight threadjacking!
IGNORE THE ALPHTARD.
Remember, only YOU can prevent the ALPHTARD from hijacking threads.
Lurking O –
Only if one assumes away the gravitivity and polarity. One is open to backsided squathrustationality then.
Regards.
Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of that. Good point, Old Texas Turkey.
Is someone trying to imply that a war of Islamic terrorism against the West doesn’t exist?
That’s quite some myth BushCo/Big Brother has created…
tw: parts79, 4th day of November…
Well, spiny,
Seeing as Saudi Arabia, the source of radical Islamic thought and funding for radical Islamists around the globe, has been our bestest ally in the Middle East for these past three decades, it is a hard myth to accept at face value.
Unless Bush holds hands and smooches with our enemies?
huh, just saw this group’s ad on America’s most watched cable news channel.
JHoward got me all thinking this thread would turn into a New Age music thread. Oh well.
Syn, et al.
Negotiation, per se, isn’t always a bad thing, and I would rather prefer more engagement from Bush. However, whatever one does, it must be done with more than a small amount of consistency and informed by a broadly supported effort, be it with credible use of force, or the ability to negotiate and make offers in good faith. Or, alternately, even if isolation isn’t working and isn’t effective, the one thing that can be done to make it even more damaging is to undermine it, as is being done by Pelosi, et al.
BRD
Ah! I see! Bush has conspired with the House of Fraud to stage phony terrorist attacks for the last 30-odd years to convince the American public that there’s a threat! Brilliant!
I suppose you’re a 9/11 Truther, too, alpee. Which is it, MIHOP or LIHOP?
Yay, nancy!
Ummm…has anyone seen Lantos? I could have sworn he was here just before we got on the plane.
Pelosi or any other congressperson, dem or rep, goes to Iran and it should be understand they do so under the threat of indictment under the Logan Act.
JPT,
There is actually a fair amount of latitude and utility in Track 2 diplomacy, but there’s a time and place for it, as well as certain protocols involved in implementation.
I’m not sure that pulling the trigger on the Logan Act would necessarily be the best move right now. Clearly, Pelosi has escalated, and one can only wait for what the reaction will be when a Republican Speaker does the same here. But pulling out the Logan Act, particularly in a world that is so tightly connected in both transport and communication could very, very, very quickly spiral out of control and turn into a unbelievably messy situation. To take a first example, wouldn’t an article condemning Pelos’s trip, printed in a newspaper with worldwide circulation be subject to Logan-like restrictions as well?
BRD
BRD,
Yes, she has, and the potential damage is such that I don’t think we can wait another 2 years minimum to see whether a republican speaker is as oblivious to the Constitution as she is.
The other circumstances you mention would never be prosecuted under the Logan Act. It’s just not that ambiguous and despite the nonsense from the left, it has been examined many times over the last 200 years. It may have been a stretch for Reagan to go after Jesse Jackson under the Logan Act like he wanted to, but this is different. It’s a separation of powers issue.
Spiny,
Are you just hiding behind a straw man, or do you honesty believe Saudi Arabia isn’t the source of radical Islamic thought, troops and funding?
Nay. Pigs on the wing, alpo, pigs on the wing. Unilluminated lunar landscapes are moneyed with the floyd’s un-red hue striking the wall, returning madness.
If the president had balls, he’d have her arrested. She’s flagrantly violating the law, specifically the various powers alotted to the different branches of government. There is a REASON why the executive branch runs foreign policy and one of those reasons is the electorate picks THE PERSON (as opposed to persons) who will represent this country and set foreign policy for this country.
The fact that Bush does not have people on every station explaining how Pelosi is A. negotiating with terrorst states and B. doing so in direct disregard of the law and the Constitution is literally so far beyond me that I’m starting to think the Bush i voted for died in office and has been replaced by a minor league player to be named later.
I had a thought yesterday, where I said “well the upside to this is that when a democratic president is in office, the republicans can pull the same stunt. Then I thought A. the republicans are too genteel (ie lacking in balls) to try it and B. I really wouldn’t want them to anyway, considering that based on the Constitution, the president is the head of state, period.
Its frustrating that Bush won’t fight back. A 5 year old could figure out how to take advantage of Pelosi’s illegal trips(note : I’m not sure its actually illegal but taking a play from the progressive playbook, I’m going to allege something because it “feels true”).
To be honest with you, I think the funniest yet most sad part of this is that the leading lady from the anti-israel party is delivering messages to Syria about Israel’s position on negotiation. I don’t rule out collusion between the jew hating Syrian government and the “zionest jew” hating Left, lead by Sec.ofSt.(in her own mind) Pelosi.
minutes21 – Took entirely too many minutes to type all that. Please ready it or I’ll feel bad.
Matt, not sure where you an esquire, but there has never been a time in this country’s modern history where Congressmen and women were locked inside during their term.
Good ol’ Newt himself was fond of going overseas when he was Speaker. Care to comment on this from the archives: Newt’s trips to Israel (where he said Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state forever, contrary to US policy, which holds the status of Jerusalem is up to the parties to negotiate) or his March 31, 1997 trip to China (where he told China we would militarily defend Taiwan. Simply put, US policy is careful in that regard. There is a law that says we will “come to the aid†of Taiwan for its self-defense, but it does not obligate to fight China).
He was off the reservation, yet, a) Nancy wasn’t in Syria and b) we all survived Newt’s moronic comments and we’ll survive Nancy’s.
Didn’t mean to ruin your rant or anything, but I’m gonna guess you’re not doing Con law at the moment. Having opinions and visiting foreign states is not against the law for members of the legislative branch.
By the way, Nancy stopped in Jerusalem on her way to Syria and advised the Israelis that “America will never abandon Israel.” Calling the party which is the home of the majority of American Jews (present company excepted) “Anti-Israel” is a joke. Neither party in this country is in any danger of being anti-Israeli.
In the future you could save a good 20 minutes from that rant by just cutting and pasting from Michael Savage’s webpage.
Soros, fortune and Saudi oil. gush.
Michael Moore eats too well to MoveOn at pace. Jello wiggles, butter sops. Thought get carried across borders nuturing.
Jihad provisions notwithstanding stout women in black support hose shrieking.
Lesser men flee to them; then skulk away post stoning.
Blasting buddhist carvings in unabashedly pragmatic karmic misstep.
Evil Bush wafts on leftist flatulence.
Careening profiteer marries waxed mustache URS
Pink Cindy Hugo tongue ick
No, alpee, unlike yourself, I have no need to hide behind any “strawmen” or your massive arsenal of non sequiturs, because I’m mocking you, you blinkered idiot.
Matt,
I took a good long look at the Logan Act, the circumstances under which the Act was enacted, and the rationale for it (almost 200 years ago). I also took a look at the relevant sections of the Constitution and several supreme court rulings related to the issue of the powers vested in the office of the president versus those vested in congress concerning the conduct of foreign affairs and negotiating with foreign powers. I did all this just a couple of days ago.
I’m convinced that there’s enough grounds under established law to indict Pelosi using the Logan Act for her trip to Suria already much less one to Iran, and also that if convicted, the conviction would likely be upheld all the way to the supreme court.
BRD has some related and reasonable concern that it could open the door to other indictments under the Logan Act. I suppose that it could become a gratuitous tool of political oneupmanship, but the instances BRD mentioned would probably not be successfully prosecuted under the Logan Act.
I think Pelosi is operating under the assumption that the office of the president won’t dare to go after her under the Logan Act, not that she is on safe legal ground.
BTW – timmyb does not know what the hell he’s talking about. He’s spinning like a dervish to dodge the essential character of Pelosi’s recent and proposed trips by equating them to congressional junkets that are made under the authorization of the office of the president and with the understanding that any diplomacy conducted is in accordance with guidelines set by the office of the president – a vital distinction that distinguishes Constitutionally protected trip by a congressmen to foreign soil from a unconstitutional ones.
editing goof. meant to say:
wrong cut and paste a second time. stupid multiple windows:
Aaaah, spiny,
A curious strategy to take for someone trying to win support for an unpopular military expedition.
A few straightforward answer might be a better strategy.
Unless there are no answers, of course.
JPT,
I think you guys would have a better chance trying Pelosi as a witch under the Salem laws.
Our revolutionary new real-media art program for serial killers will be darn near runnable by next week. We just have to fix random libelous comments about Syrian authorities that occur while using the Ricki Lake impersonation.
He also doesn’t seem to understand the difference between an enemy and an ally. Imagine that.
“Presidents don’t lose wars…. Nations lose wars”
~John McCain probably ripping off someone else’s pithy quote~
Timmy, how does your head keep its o-rings in place when you write crap like this?
There is not one SINGLE member of the legislative, exeutive, or judicial branch that reads the Taiwan Relations Act as any thing other than containing an implicit security guarantee.
AND
You might want to ask the PRC if they read it your way. Just on a hunch, I’d say: NOT.
Norman. The opinions of a 15 year old count for naught, and can be dismissed out of hand. Unless he yells ‘FIRE’ and indeed there is a fire, he is best ignored.
Look, Pelosi will never be voted out of office. All she has to do is go home and march with NAMBLA in the Gay Pride Parade, make a few promises about gay marriage she’ll never have to keep, and she’s good for another two years barring a prosecution.
So in the meantime, let her be as freaky as she wants and publicize it as loudly as we can, and use her to beat every freshman Democrat we can reach over the head and shoulders. May as well get some use out of her.
I think the fact that the newspapers and pundits who are otherwise quite sympathetic and in support of Speaker Pelosi called her trip an attempt to change foreign policy sort of a hint that she was, in fact, doing more than just sight seeing.
The wrongness is a constant here. Comforting in times of such uncertainty.
Well, at least now we know why Nancy wanted a bigger plane…
Wish, et al.
On the Taiwan Relations Act, there is some legal wiggle room on whether or not it actually triggers commencement of military operations against the PRC. While it is certainly reasonable to read that into the Act, there is enough wiggle room that military action wouldn’t be a certainty.
Among other things, it is worth noting that the Act was passed not that many years after the establishment of relations with the PRC, and the advice of Nixon and Kissinger that Taiwan could eventually be reunited with the mainland, but that it was a matter of patience.
Also, keep in mind that putting an automatic fight clause into the Act severely limits our foreign policy choices and given that the PRC has established several conditions under which they would axiomatically declare a state of war against Taiwan, a reading of the Act that makes a war inevitable means that, essentially, the Taiwanese electorate would be the only people to be able to decide when or if there should be a major war in the Pacific with China.
Personally, I would like to hope that the involvement of the US is understood, but cannot be assumed to be axiomatic, so that there is a bit more planning uncertainty all around, and that since our involvement is somewhat flexible, that we would then have room to negotiate with China in such a conflict.
BRD
Care to offer specifics, genius, or are you devolving into alphie mode?
BRD,
Excellent points. The entire US/PRC/Taiwan triangle is base on recognized (and useful) ambiguity about the latter’s status.
However, the only scenario that I can foresee with no US military involvement is a unitaeral declaration of independence by Taiwan. Such an event would be where the wiggle room that you pointed out would be operative.
But I think that you would agree that a PRC attack in the absence of a provacative act on Taiwan’s part would trigger US involvement. There would be little to negotiate about and less time.
Why would he want to give specifics? That would require him to think.
Wish,
That’s about where I see it. A standoff isn’t always the preferred option for stability, but in this case, it seems reasonably workable.
I can’t remember the entire list of “Do Not Do” things for Taiwan from the PRC, but, as you note, UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) is one. Another is if Taiwan acquires nukes. I seem to recall that there might be others, but if they are of this ilk, then the situation as you describe it might not be too bad.
BRD
Those two would almost have to go together in my view.
JPT, et al.
I’ve been thinking about this Pelosi trip for a bit now, and clearly there are some very bad precedents being established in terms of US politics, I’m not sure how damaging this is in a foreign policy context.
Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?
BRD
I don’t know from the mil-talk you all are going on about, but permission to speak? Pelosi et al. are idiots for flitting about with their photo ops. From my reading, the islamos are monolicthic, and sending mixed signals is a fractious and potentially fatal error. As much as I swallow buckets o’bile, the West must present a united face; otherwise, we expose the proverbial soft underbelly. Or am I wrong here?
I meant monolithic, not some Weslh word.
I meant Welsh. You get it; I’m sure you do.
Actually, comparing Pelosi to Neville Chamberlin is unfair to Neville – he had enough brains before succumbing to cancer to acknowledge that he had been a dupe, and to reverse his stand on how to deal with Hitler. He stepped aside to allow a unified government to be formed to seriously prosecute Britain’s war.
Pelosi obviously lacks that amount of wit and integrity.
Cynn,
That’s pretty much what I’ve been thinking, but it doesn’t feel like I’ve completely thought through it yet, so that’s why I’m still mulling it over and would happy to get more input.
BRD
Pelossi is a dissembler, but she’s no idiot. She’s going into hostile territory under the mantle of “opposition party” so that she is in an unassailable yet credible position. She can’t be dismissed, because the dems have the votes in the air, and you thugs have all the risk on the ground.
Here’s the really serious facet of Pelosi’s “diplomacy”, BRD–the chance that it skews the calculus of the Assad’s and the Iranian mullahs into abject miscalculation.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions could suffer as aresult. That is what troubles me most.
And why would anyone take Nancy Pelosi seriously? Relax, and inhale some menthol. It’s pure theater.
BRD,
What happens if Iran takes US military hostages and Mojo rejects US demands for their release until he can negotiate with someone who will set reasonable demands – Speaker Pelosi.
Does her trip to Syria give the impression of precedence in international eyes? EU? UN?
If Mojo doesn’t like what Condi Rice says will he announce that he needs to hear what the people of the US really think from Speaker Pelosi?
Not enough, well, what about after she takes a trip to Iran to meet with Mojo with the stated purpose that ‘it is important that we have a dialogue with him,’ as her invaluable colleague Lantos said. The fellow Pelosi valued so highly for what his ‘great experience, knowledge and judgment’ brought to her last trip. How about if she gets to Irane and apes her Syria trip by assuring Mojo that it is the US’ intention to work with him to resolve our differences.
You can only speak in one voice in foreign policy. The framers of the Constitution understood that and 25 years or so later it was codified in the Logan Act after some STATE legislator named Logan screwed up John Adams negotiations with France by taking it on himself to take a trip to Paris and spout policy. Bad times then – Napoleonic Wars and all – and this mook thought Adams had it wrong.
More recently in the mid 1930’s Roosevelt had to see a case to the supreme court to get a definitive ruling on who ran what to keep Curtis-Wright from selling arms to combatants counter to US foreign policy. Bad times then and a damn good thing Roosevelt got his ruling when he did. That opinion of SCOTUS was:
‘The President is the constitutional representative of the United States with regard to foreign nations. He manages our concerns with foreign nations, and must necessarily be most competent to determine when, how, and upon what subjects negotiation may be urged with the greatest prospect of success. For his conduct, he is responsible to the Constitution.’
Responsible to the Constitution. Not responsible to congress. Not responsible to Pelosi’s political power base or constituents. The Constitution.
Now we have Nancy Pelosi assuring Assad of what the US policy in it’s relations with Syria should be – not is, but should be – when she was not only not authorized by the office of the president to meet with a foreign head of state and discuss US foreign policy, but expressly and respectfully warned not to. And these are bad times arguably as threatening to the national interest and security as the Napoleonic or pre-WWII times.
Pelosi broke the law. She is announcing outright that she intends to do so again by going to Iran and telling Mojo what US policy should be.
I submit that by having done so and in doing so she is condemning military personal to death and furthermore endangering every citizen in this country.
Cynn,
She can be dismissed because she can be indicted. And no matter what the dem votes in the legislature add up to, it’s then in the hands of the judiciary.
Doubt it. I have a passport; I can use it.
What, malfeasance in office: you’d better tread carefully here.