Speaker Pelosi’s planned visit to Syria next week seems to have generated some over-the-top outrage from our friends on the right, spurred on by the White House.
The Bush administration has resisted significant contact with the Syrian government, accusing it of meddling in Lebanon, supporting terrorism and being unhelpful on Iraq.
“We don’t think it’s a good idea,” said the White House deputy press secretary, Dana Perino, of the Congressional visit. “We think that someone should take a step back and think about the message that it sends.”
Perino added, “I’m not sure what the hopes are to — what [Pelosi is] hoping to accomplish there. I know that Assad probably really wants people to come and have a photo opportunity and have tea with him, and have discussions about where they’re coming from, but we do think that’s a really bad idea.”
For a lot of conservatives, that’s all they needed to hear. Indeed, far-right blogs pounced — one said this is proof that “Democrats seem to be setting up a separate government with its own suicidally [sic] blind idea of who’s a terrorist and who isn’t (basically, nobody is).” Another insisted that Pelosi’s decision to visit Syria is “repulsive” and questioned her loyalty to the U.S. Another still asked, “Can we question [Democrats’] patriotism now?” Yet another concluded that Pelosi’s trip “has to teeter on the edge of treason.”
How foolish is all of this? How wrong are the far-right blogs? Let us count the ways.
1. Pelosi is heading a bipartisan delegation to Syria. Apparently, House Republicans are repulsive, suicidal, and treasonous too?
2. Trips from U.S. officials to Syria are not that unusual. Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) recently traveled to Damascus, where Specter reportedly “stressed the importance of reactivating the dialogue between the United States and Syria to achieve security and stability in the Middle East.” Let me guess, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania also deserves to have his patriotism questioned, right?
3. Pelosi’s trip is consistent with the judgment of the Iraq Study Group, which as recently as Thursday, the White House praised for offering guidelines that lawmakers should follow.
4. The Bush administration itself has initiated some tentative discussions with Syrian officials recently. By the right’s logic, it would appear the Bush administration is undermining the Bush administration’s policy.
5. The White House said it had not been informed about Pelosi’s delegation visiting Syria. This is false — Bush and Pelosi discussed it on Thursday.
6. A number of right-wing Republican lawmakers are already in Syria now.
Not only are the administration’s attacks on Pelosi hypocritical, but the timing suggests they are a partisan hit. ThinkProgress has learned that a delegation of Republicans is currently in Syria. (This has not been previously reported by the press.) Why did the White House wait until Pelosi’s imminent visit to raise this issue publicly, and not make mention of the Republicans already there?
Here’s what the White House isn’t talking about:
Republican Reps. Aderholt and Wolf are currently visiting Syria. According to a congressional official on Rep. Robert Aderholt’s (R-AL) staff, Aderholt and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) are currently visiting Israel and Syria.
TP’s report has been confirmed by Bloomberg.
As far as I can tell, the White House and far-right bloggers haven’t complained at all about this other trip. In other words, when Pelosi leads a bipartisan delegation to Syria, she’s a traitor to her country. When conservative GOP lawmakers visit Syria, well, the right doesn’t want to talk about it. Got it.
On a related note, have you noticed how spectacularly wrong conservative blogs have been lately? Every time the right’s blogs think they’re on to something big, they end up getting the story backwards and looking rather foolish. I’m starting to feel kind of bad for them.
First there was Cliff May’s email from a Marine about Iraq and the media, which conservatives jumped all over, which turned out to be wrong. Then there was a picture of John Kerry in Iraq that was “proof” that the troops resented him, which also turned out to be wrong. Then there was Capt. Jamil Hussein, which has turned out to be a humiliating story for the right. Conservative blogs said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead when he wasn’t; they said Barack Obama was educated in a madrassa; and they falsely accused Nancy Pelosi of demanding a luxurious military jet. In February, they complained about Oregon’s official state climatologist getting fired for rejecting global warming, before we learned that Oregon doesn’t have an official state climatologist. And now they’ve flubbed the story about Pelosi and Syria.
It’s early yet, but one wonders if 2007 will be the year in which conservative blogs get everything wrong.