America, please stand up for Nancy Patricia D Alesandro Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Pelosi is not only the moral fiber of courage which the US sorely needs post-Iraq War, but is also the first woman to hold such a position in US politics.
In speech after speech, she has embarrassed the Bush administration’s bungling of Iraq, the War on Terra (Terror) and the squandered chances for pushing ahead a peace agenda in the broader Middle East.
And the piece de resistance came last week when she plowed ahead with her plans to meet with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus.
Damascus, one of the most ancient cities in the world, renown for its Arab, Islamic and Christian cultures could have been modern-day Baghdad if the neoconservatives desperately hanging on to power had their ways.
But they didn’t, thanks to the quagmire that is now Iraq. If one can be pulled by the hand and dragged back to the summer of Mission Accomplished when all the yakity-yak coming out of Washington seemed to indicate that a war on Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran would immediately follow the Iraq invasion.
But that never materialized. The US found itself bogged down as it raced from one Arab “ally to another in vain attempts to persuade Egypt and Saudi Arabia, even Yemen, to send troops to Iraq.
Thanks, but no thanks, was the collective answer. No one wanted to do the US military’s dirty work in Iraq and thereby allow the military juggernaut to invade other countries.
Then came last year’s Hezbollah war which effectively brought the Walls of Jericho down on . Jericho and signaled that Israeli military might was not as it should be. “A new Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bemoaned. But that was the last time we heard her say that.
Engage Syria and Iran, open channels for dialogue many former neocons said. But the Bush administration would not budge.
The war ended in a military defeat for Israel, a financial and infrastructural (not to forget human resource) defeat for Lebanon, and political wins for Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
Then came the Democrats’ big win in both Houses of Congress, the changing tide for US mainstream politics in dealing with the Iraq war, and several damning reports which cast the Bush administration in a not so blessed light.
The Bush administration has not only come under persistent criticism from across the world but also at home. President George W. Bush’s popularity and standing is at an all-time low, rivaling that of the late president Richard Nixon who always maintained he was not a crook.
Will Bush ever make similar speech? Do not bank on it, conventional wisdom would have it.
Given that US foreign policy has been grievously mismatched with the reality on the ground and that the US military has effectively lost Iraq and the War on Terra, perhaps a change of tactic and decorum is called for.
Pelosi’s visit to Damascus is a step in the right direction.
And a woman shall show them the way .
Alexander Gainemis a writer and researcher on Middle East affairs. He has visited Syria several times. He wrote this article for The Daily Star Egypt.
