Posted by Plain Dealer It's too bad, because Kucinich's foreign-policy instincts aren't always misguided. He was right to vote against the war in Iraq. His wish to avoid further knee-jerk policy by reaching out to Middle Eastern leaders is laudable. Yet these ideas turn to farce when Kucinich unveils the specifics. His 12-point Iraq withdrawal plan includes nonexistent U.N. peacekeepers and U.S. and British reparations. His outreach to Middle Eastern leaders involves pretending that Iran's threats against Israel were mistranslations, and then making a "peace" trip to Syria this month that amounted to a propaganda coup for Syrian President Bashar Assad. Kucinich used the opportunity to bash President Bush's policies and praise Assad on Syrian television. (Excerpts from that interview can be viewed at www.memritv.org/clip/en/1550.htm.) Kucinich then told the Associated Press in Lebanon that he'd ruled out a visit to Iraq because he didn't want to "bless" the "illegal occupation." Instead, he "blessed" a government that harbors terrorists and is under a U.N. cloud for possible involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Syria remains a crucial piece of the Iraq solution. Not only is Syria providing a safe haven for more than a million Iraqi refugees, but it also is a weak link in the chain mail of Hezbollah terrorism. Syria was a U.S. ally as recently as the 1991 Persian Gulf War and is a natural supporter of a secular solution in Iraq. That U.S. officials after Colin Powell at State have been unwise enough not to reach out to Damascus doesn't change those facts. The very nature of American democracy means it does not function like a monolith. U.S. lawmakers should be free to travel to Syria; Republican Rep. David Hobson of Springfield, near Dayton, did so earlier this year, traveling with Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Yet it's also important that U.S. interests be kept paramount. The idea must be to promote U.S. diplomacy, not to undermine it through ill-informed antics. Kucinich speaks of the need for more even-handed U.S. foreign policy - but then he travels on the dime of interest groups. His tour last year of Lebanese war damage with his wife, Elizabeth, that included stops in Damascus and Jerusalem, was paid for by AACCESS-Ohio, a local Arab-American group, according to his latest congressional financial disclosure. As for this trip to Syria and Lebanon, Kucinich's presidential campaign initially told The Plain Dealer's Stephen Koff that it was paid for out of 2008 campaign coffers. When asked about that Tuesday, campaign spokeswoman Sharon Manitta said she had "heard that a group of people in Cleveland were trying to pay for it." Hmmm. Let's hope the campaign gets the details straight before the next filing deadline. There's nothing wrong with traveling for knowledge and outreach. Yet Kucinich undercuts his own good ideas and his ability to push for change when his policy response itself seems so skewed by self-interest, and by others' interests.
on September 13, 2007, 8:43 pm
24.165.167.241
Cleveland's own helps neither himself nor his nation with his one-sided pseudo-diplomacy in the Middle East
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Dennis Kucinich gets it half-right. The Cleveland congressman's grand ideas fizzle because of his tin ear for details and nuance. Now his quest for the presidency is leading him even farther afield of reality, right into the lion's den of Middle East deception and manipulation.
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