Lebanese Christian says Pelosi sending wrong message to Arab world

Lebanese Christian says Pelosi sending wrong message to Arab world

A Lebanese-American journalist and author says U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by holding talks with the Syrian government, is emboldening enemies of the United States and sending them the message that the U.S. is divided in its support for the war on terror.

Speaker Pelosi has said she hopes to rejuvenate U.S. relations with Syria when she meets with dictator Bashar Assad and other Syrian officials in Damascus. But Brigitte Gabriel, author of Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America (St. Martin's Press, 2006) and president of AmericanCongressforTruth.org, believes Pelosi is sending the message to America's enemies that the U.S. is divided.

"Already, radio talk-show hosts in the Middle East and Arabic are making fun of our government," Gabriel notes, "saying that even the speaker of the House of the American government thinks that George Bush is stupid, and [that] they are here to represent the half of America who does not agree with the American aggression and wrongdoing in the Middle East."

This is "the last message we want to send our enemy," the author notes. And yet, she asserts, "this is what Pelosi's visit is doing to Syria."

During the U.S. House speaker's Mideast trip, she visited with Lebanese Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite leader with the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Gabriel says Berri helped Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah get the terrorist group started in Lebanon.

The Lebanese-American journalist says Pelosi's recent meeting with Berri in Lebanon signals to the Arab world that she's "working with those who kill American Marines in Baghdad," since it is "in the Ain El Helwi camps in Lebanon that the Hezbollah is developing the IED, the roadside explosive bombs that are being detonated against our troops in Afghanistan and also in Iraq."

Those improvised explosive devices are made in Lebanon and "are transported from Lebanon via Syria into Iraq to kill our troops," Gabriel says. "So what type of message is Pelosi sending to the Arabic world," the author asks, "when somebody like her will go and meet with our enemy over there?"

Since the Iranian hostage crisis, the U.S. has learned that negotiations with dictators do not produce any positive results in the Middle East, Gabriel contends. She says Pelosi, rather than meeting with al-Assad, Berri and the like, should instead be meeting with American generals who served in the first Gulf War and the Iraq War and who know what strategies are effective for defeating America's enemies in the Middle East.