BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES DEFENDS PELOSI; ACCUSES GOP OF PARTISAN GAMES

Excerpted from an April 13 editorial in the Baltimore Jewish Times:

Diplomacy is not a weakness:  That’s a lesson the Bush administration, mired in Iraq and increasingly isolated in the world, doesn’t seem to learn.

House Speak Nancy Pelosi’s recent Middle East mission cast an uncomfortable spotlight on that reality.  Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat born in Baltimore, was skewered by the administration for violating its policy of keeping the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the diplomatic deep freeze.

Much of that criticism was pure politics, not policy; the administration didn’t seem to care much about the Republican delegations that also went to Damascus over Congress’s spring break.

In reality, the only message Ms. Pelosi delivered was one consistent with U.S. policy: Syria must stop its support for terrorists and its meddling in Lebanon if it wants to be treated as a responsible member of the international community.  And she delivered it to Mr. Assad eyeball to eyeball, unlike an administration that won’t even talk to Damascus ...

.... Tough diplomacy, not diplomatic shunning, is what’s needed with Syria today.  And the last thing we need is partisan game-playing over Ms. Pelosi’s Middle East mission.