Ambassador Pelosi

The Daily Colonial paper of George Washington University has a scathing editorial by Nick Miller on what Pelosi has accomplished in a mere four months as Speaker of the House.

Nancy Pelosi has been Speaker of the House for less than four months, yet in that short time she has already managed to prove herself incapable of responsible leadership. Embracing her new position of power, Pelosi seems determined to meddle in areas where she is least needed, most notably in the realm of diplomacy and foreign policy.

Coming on the heels of her possibly felonious diplomatic excursion to Syria last month, Pelosi is apparently continuing to pursue her misguided and backwards attempts at diplomacy. According to a report from The American Spectator last week, Pelosi has refused to meet with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe (an American ally), but is planning a visit to Venezuela to meet with Hugo Chavez — one of the world’s most outspoken enemies of the United States.

In other words, in continued disregard for the Constitution of the United States, Pelosi has taken it upon herself to ignore U.S. diplomatic policies and attempt to engage in her own personal diplomacy with America’s enemies.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution explicitly states that that President is the one who “shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers” and that the President “shall have the power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties.”

In addition, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the President and his authorized agents have the sole authority to negotiate with foreign governments, and the Logan Act specifically forbids unauthorized Americans from negotiating with foreign governments with the intent to impact relations between that government and the U.S.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Constitution and U.S. laws are of little significance for Pelosi, who would rather win cheap political points with moveon.org than obey those pesky things known as “laws.”..

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At a stage in American history where foreign policy issues reign supreme, it is even more important than usual that the United States present a united diplomatic front. Legal issues notwithstanding, it is both sad and disturbing that Nancy Pelosi is using her position as Speaker to undermine American foreign policy for her own political purposes. Not only is she potentially hindering American diplomatic efforts, but she is also proving herself unfit for the job of Speaker.

Get this: Nancy Pelosi won’t meet with Presdient Uribe of Columbia, perhaps the most pro-US leader in South America, despite his going out of his way to make the meeting happen.

According to sources within the House Democratic leadership, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has denied the request for a meeting with Uribe when he comes to Washington next week. Uribe’s staff has attempted to set up a meeting with Pelosi, offering to come to her offices with Uribe if necessary. Pelosi has refused the meeting.

“She has third parties who have encouraged her not to take the meeting,” says a leadership aide, who said a coalition of labor organizations and MoveOn.org had been pressuring her to not meet with Uribe. “We’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not like we’re talking about some family from San Francisco who stopped by her office unannounced. This is the president of a country.”

In Colombia, Uribe has been struggling against communist terrorist groups financed by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, as well as leftist political pressure internally. All while attempting to work with the U.S. against narco-trafficking. “He’s a friend and an ally,” says a State Department source, who was unaware of Pelosi’s snub. “I’d be surprised that one of our national leaders would not meet with a strategic partner of the United States of America.”

But guess who Nancy will meet with? Uribe’s socialist, anti-America, anti-free trade, anti-human-rights enemy Hugo Chavez.

According to leadership staff, [Pelosi] has members of her personal staff working on initial plans for a trip to Venezuela, perhaps in the fall, to meet with Chavez.

So let’s review:

Pelosi won’t meet with General Petraeus, the commander of the most important conflict in the middle east. But she will meet with Syrian dictator Bassar Assad, one of the biggest sponsors of terrorism in the middle east.

Pelosi snubs one of our most important allies in South America, but will make time for our biggest enemy in South America in the person of Hugo Chavez.

Anyone else seeing a pattern here?
UPDATE: The beat goes on.

The newest Comedy From the UN

This from Anne Bayefsky at NRO

On April 9, 2007 there was a United Nations believe-it-or-not moment extraordinaire. At the same time that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad declared his country was now capable of industrial-scale uranium enrichment, the U.N. reelected Iran as a vice chairman of the U.N. Disarmament Commission.

Yes Ripley, the very U.N. body charged with promoting nuclear nonproliferation installed in a senior position the state that the Security Council recently declared violated its nonproliferation resolutions.

So in Iran at the Natanz nuclear facility Ahmadinejad gloated: “With great pride, I announce as of today our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.” And in New York, courtesy of his U.N. platform, Iranian Disarmament Vice-Chairman Seyed Mohammad Ali Robatjazi railed against “noncompliance with the NPT [nuclear nonproliferation treaty] by the United States” and “the Zionist lobby.”

It took the U.N. a mere five days to rehabilitate Iran after the British kidnap victims made it home alive. Just the night before on April 8, Faye Turney, the only female victim, revealed her Iranian abductors stripped her to her underwear, caged her in a tiny, freezing cell, and subjected her to mental torture such as leading her to believe that her death was imminent.

But while this was actually happening to Faye Turney, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, the president of the U.N.’s lead human-rights body — the U.N. Human Rights Council — was making this announcement, March 26, 2006:

I would like to make the following statement adopted by the Council. One,…the Human Rights Council has in closed meetings examined the human rights situation in…the Islamic Republic of Iran…Two, the Human Rights Council has decided to discontinue the consideration of the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran…Three,…members of the Human Rights Council should make no reference in the public debate to the confidential decisions and material concerning [the Islamic Republic of Iran]…

And it just keeps getting better.

This is not simply a very bad joke. The U.N. is feted by many as the go-to address for international progress in the world today. Congressman Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, declared at a hearing on U.N. reform in February that “the U.N. provides vital support to core U.S. foreign-policy initiatives” including on Iran and the way forward is to “ratchet up our level of diplomacy there.”

“Ratchet up” suffers from some elementary numerical challenges — not to mention the netherworld where that ratcheting is headed. Congressman Lantos and his close friend former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have long been drinking from the same well. The “reformed” Human Rights Council was Annan’s creation. Lantos is the leading advocate of the United States joining the Human Rights Council — where presumably we could jump up and down while exercising one vote out of 47. Annan, of his own volition, went to Tehran last September and urged the world not to isolate Iran immediately after the Iranian president had ignored a Security Council deadline to suspend its nuclear activities. Lantos confessed to the House Committee at the end of February that he has been begging for a visa to go to Iran for the past ten years and “will be among the first ones to do so once this visa is granted.”

Lantos was pleased with his recent trip, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to Syria. The U.N. shares his view that one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism ought to be a welcome player on the world stage. Following the election on Monday of Iran as vice chairman, the U.N. Disarmament Commission elected Syria as its rapporteur.

The line between U.N. diplomacy and farce has been crossed. The real tragedy is that the defensible border between our freedom-loving rights-respecting world and the cave of our enemies is fading along with it

And we get this from The Canada Free Press;

Pelosi and the Peter Principle

By Alan Caruba

Thursday, April 12, 2007

"Everyone rises to their level of incompetence," wrote Laurence J. Peter, the author of 'The Peter Principle', a book that enshrined that wonderful insight in American culture ever since its publication in 1969. Watching Nancy Pelosi since she ascended Constitutionally as Speaker of the House within Dick Cheney's heartbeat of the Presidency, I was reminded of that.

When the Washington Post takes you to task, as it did on April 5 in an editorial, "Pratfall in Damascus", you have to know that Nancy is in way over her head. Her trip to the Holy Land of Israel and the unholy one of Syria was a complete debacle. "We come in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," said Speaker Pelosi. The Post editorial dismissed that as "ludicrous."...

Presumably, one does not achieve such success by being stupid. Yet, as Speaker, everyone has witnessed her saying and doing some astonishingly stupid things. The Washington Post admonished her, saying that, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad."

While being villified by the GOP and the Post and USA Today at home however, she is being praised and even given the title of Alternate President in other parts of the world. In an editorial in the Saudi Gazette dated April 6 we find this kudos from the Kingdom.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reminds us of the ambitious office worker who is surrounded by dunderheads who can't or won't get the job done. So she rolls up her sleeves and says for all the world to hear: "Well, it looks like I'll have to do it myself."

Pelosi, the rabble-rousing Democratic leader - or better yet the Alternate President - has apparently decided that President George Bush's refusal to sit down and negotiate with Syria and Iran is just plain silly. If we are going to inch closer toward peace in Iraq, slow down Iran's nuclear ambitions and create a stable region, perhaps folding our arms across our chests and frowning is not the right approach.

Bold added.

I have a plethora of praises from our "friends" in the ME for our Alternate President.Iran is looking forward to her possible visit.

Palestine, Pelosi and Perfidy

As expected, the Pelosi and Company trip to Syria and Israel has been met with a blogospheric firestorm. I have my own thought to add to this kerfuffle but that will have to be postponed a bit. It has been well covered by the blog world and I can't add much. I would like to draw your attention to this article written in The American Thinker. It is an eyeopening piece to anyone who has not been following the Palestinian problems. An Excerpt:

According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) tens of billions of dollars (one-third from US taxpayers, the rest mostly from Canada and European countries) have been spent over the last 50 years providing "Palestinian refugees" and their descendents. An estimated half million people 60 years ago, that number is now over four million and increasing daily.

UNRWA's purpose: to insure the "Palestinian Right of Return" - the destruction of Israel.

No Arab country except Jordan -- where they constitute more than two-thirds of the population - accepts them as citizens. Saudi Arabia, for example, recently passed a law allowing all foreigner workers in the country to apply for Saudi citizenship next year - except Palestinians.

More than 400,000 "Palestinian refugees" living in UNWRA-supported "camps" in Lebanon cannot work or even go to school outside their designated areas. Ditto for Syria.

Most "Palestinian refugees" listed by UNRWA (which includes Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and Gaza) in 2002, don't even live in the camps, but in nearby villages and towns. All receive free assistance and services for the rest of their life, including their children, their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, ad infinitum.

According to UNRWA's rules, anyone who applied for relief, claiming they lived in Palestine for at least two years prior to 1948 (when Israel was attacked) and claimed to have lost property and livelihood was entitled to assistance, regardless of where they came from, or where they live today. Once a "Palestinian refugee," always a "Palestinian refugee."

That is not all the writer has to say:

UNRWA openly admits that they don't monitor programs that support terrorism, or payments to families of terrorists by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezb'allah and (until recently) Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

In fact, nearly all teachers employed by UNRWA are members of terrorist-controlled unions. Funding these teachers and the curriculum of hatred and bigotry, supports terrorism and terrorist organizations. This may explain why so many children are willing to blow themselves up, carry weapons and explosives and place themselves as shields for terrorists.

Although responsible for what goes on in the areas it administers, UNRWA ignores the fact that terrorists are being trained there, including the next generation of homicide bombers, that bomb-making factories flourish inside the camps, and that arms and ammunition are stockpiled there.

UNRWA ignores the launching of thousands of rocket attacks against Israel from within territory under its responsibility.

And most outrageous, UNRWA is accountable only to the UN General Assembly, dominated by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Conference which is also part of the 115-member Non-Aligned Movement -- an automatic majority in the 191-member U.N.

UNRWA violates its own UN mandate (Resolution 302), which states (Paragraph 5): "constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief."

UNRWA (Paragraph 7) indicates only two responsibilities: to work with Arab governments to provide jobs for the refugees and to help Arab governments end (not perpetuate) international assistance. UNRWA has been doing the exact opposite.

The "Palestinian Right of Return" (to Israel) -- their basic, non-negotiable demand - encourages the refusal to accept Israel's existence and fuels Palestinian terrorism. It reinforces Palestinians' belief in their victimization, promotes a culture of denial and self-destruction, and sabotages any hope for change. UNRWA facilitates this mess.

And we pay for it. Had enough? Stop the funding, now.

As always, read the whole thing.