The Lebanese
Information Center (LIC) is grateful to the members
of congress led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for
their visit to Lebanon earlier this week. The
Speaker’s historical support for Lebanon’s
independence and the statements she made during her
recent visit to Beirut were consistent with her
earlier support of HR1828, the “Syria Accountability
and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003”.
Commenting on HR 1828
on October 15, 2003, then Congresswoman Pelosi
stated, "…Syria’s assistance to terrorist
organizations is well known, and the State
Department continues to list Syria as a state
sponsor of terrorism, in violation of resolutions on
that issue by the United Nations Security Council.
The Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, which Syria controls,
provides a haven and the site of training facilities
for Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups.
These activities could not occur without the assent
of the Syrian government….”
Regrettably, despite
the withdrawal in April 2005 of regular Syrian Army
personnel from Lebanon in the aftermath of the Cedar
Revolution, which had climaxed on March 14, 2005,
Syria continues to provide “a haven and the site of
training facilities for (…) terrorist groups”.
Additionally, it continues to instigate and to
materially support an attempted counter-revolution
in Lebanon that seeks to overthrow Lebanon’s
democratically-installed Government and to create
instability in Lebanon. Furthermore, its
destabilizing role in Iraq and in the Palestinian
territories continues unabashed. Therefore, the US
administration has been successful in isolating the
Syrian regime, an isolation which would and should
end only when the latter changes its behavior,
abandons its support for anti-American insurgents in
Iraq and for terrorist organizations in the
Palestinian territories, shuts down the headquarters
of Hamas and its ilk in Damascus and stop its
meddling in Lebanon’s internal affairs.
Given the continued
intransigence of the Syrian regime and House Speaker
Pelosi’s historic support for the Lebanese
pro-democracy movement, her visit to Damascus is
regrettable. Irrespective of the Speaker’s good
intentions to conduct a fact-finding trip to the
Middle East, the Syrian regime had already started
to misrepresent this visit even before the above
referenced delegation arrived to Syria as a break in
the US’ isolation of its rogue regime. It has
peddled the visit of the Speaker and her
accompanying delegation as a thaw in US-Syrian
relations, which is a representation that could not
be farther from the truth.
While we can well
understand the logic of dialogue as a general rule,
we reiterate Speaker Pelosi’s own words, “…Rhetoric
has thus far not been effective in encouraging the
Syrian government to cease its assistance to
terrorists…” To her words of wisdom we add, “And it
won’t”.
© 2007
Lebanese Information Center – www.licus.org
