On the heels of my earlier piece on the lies of the Syrian negotiator, we have this article on negotiating with Syria by one of the Bush Administration Syria advisers:
The White House has been critical of renewed engagement with Syria on Iraq. Its own extensive efforts at dialogue failed miserably, leading the Bush administration to the conclusion that engagement was unhelpful at best, and counterproductive at worst. Legislators such as Sen. Kerry maintain that “you can’t begin to resolve those differences if you’re not willing to try to understand.” But even those making the trek to Damascus aren’t optimistic that engagement will work. Rather, the argument seems to be that engagement can’t hurt.
Regrettably, the Bush administration’s experience has proven otherwise. Meetings, in which U.S. emissaries delivered blunt messages to Asad, were spun by Damascus as “breakthroughs” in Syrian-U.S. relations, undermining the morale of the region’s democrats and alleviating pressure on the regime. As White House spokesman Tony Snow said after Nelson’s visit, even if delegations deliver a tough message, “the Syrian have already won a PR victory.”
In other words, the Syrians are masters of spin, just as the negotiator quoted in my post used spin to blame all of the failures on Israel and America.
So Bush administration engagement has proved unproductive. But what of congressional visits? A quick assessment suggests that these meetings have also undermined Bush administration policy. A 2003 meeting of U.S. Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, and Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., with Asad is emblematic of the problem. During the trip, Issa and Rahall discussed with Asad the presence in Syria of former Iraqi regime elements who were aiding the insurgency in Iraq. The congressmen later told the press: “We looked the president [Asad] in the eyes and asked for his assurance that he would expel any Iraqi leader in his country and not grant asylum. He agreed.” With this pledge in hand, Issa and Rahall declared victory. Issa later pronounced that Asad’s “word seems to be good.”
The problem, of course, is that Asad lied. Two years later, in February 2005, the Bush administration announced that Syria continued to harbor a dozen former top-ranking associates of Saddam Hussein, who were helping to orchestrate the insurgency.
I suppose we could call Syrian negotiations “Lying Lies and the Liars that Lie Them,” but that’d be, well, redundant.