Taking Responsibility

First, let me just reiterate a point that I touched on earlier. One can believe two things about Syrian involvement at this point. Either Bashar al-Assad is behind the violence, or he is the most astute political observer on the planet. How else to take his comment about how the region would be "set on fire" if the international tribunal was passed? Does Bashar have a magic ball which told him the international tribunal would be the final straw for (of all people) the Sunni Islamists and the Palestinians?

I hate to be glib about this. It's a serious issue, and it deserves a serious response. But the politics behind the latest violence do not seem that hard to unravel. Let me be more blunt -- they seem blindingly obvious. Sometimes, when people in the Middle East talk about their eternal conflicts, they will pause, shake their heads, and say, "it is very complicated." They are normally wrong. The fundamentals of the conflict are not particularly complicated, they are merely hard to resolve. There is a difference.

Obviously, the only people who are responsible for the violence in Tripoli and the murders in Beirut are those who were involved in planning and carrying out the attacks. But it is also important to look at the people whose actions allowed the violence to occur. And at the top of that list has to be Nancy Pelosi and her trip to Damascus. When Bashar al-Assad saw her sitting there, veiled and smiling, all that he thought was: "the Americans need me now. I can run wild throughout the region, and they are powerless to respond."

Pelosi met with Assad, she said, "with no illusions, but great hope." Some reporter needs to ask her what has happened to that hope. He could also ask her if she regrets going to Damascus. However, I think I already know how she would answer. Lebanese lives are less important than sticking a finger in Bush's eye.