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Pelosi Tests the Ripple Effect Barry Farber You're excused if you didn't get as excited by the Washington Post's blistering attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Damascus as I did. It's understandable if Ms. Pelosi's visit didn't bother you as much as it bothered me. To me, the utter unexpectedness of the liberal Post's annihilation of this liberal act by this leading liberal had to remind me of the time as a child during World War II when the closing scene in a movie about Nazi-occupied Norway made me stand up in the National theater in Greensboro, N.C., and howl with joy. The film showed a Norwegian coastal village struggling against the difficulties and outrages of the German occupation. The meek and kindly preacher kept exhorting his congregation to turn the other cheek; hate the sin but love the sinner; Germans as well as Norwegians are God's children; this, too shall pass; and all the other religious palliatives that substitute for "Find a way to cut their gizzards out!" The townspeople didn't like the preacher's message, but they had the Germans to worry about. At the end of the movie the Germans had captured a dozen or so activist members of the Norwegian underground and they were about to execute them by firing squad in the villlage square while the helpless townspeople looked on. "Ready," barked the Nazi commandant. "Aim!" Just before the command to fire, the camera jumped to the steeple of the church where we saw the kindly preacher lick the tip of his Sten gun's barrel and — after all of his "Turn the other cheek" business — mowed down every German soldier in the square. Story Continues Below
What makes the Pelosi prank and prattfall so maddening is the strange dynamic that makes naïve and ignorant people sound so righteous in arguments like this. "What's the harm of talking?" they plead. "What's the danger of opening a dialogue with Syria?" "What harm can possibly come from our leaders talking to their leaders?" In the sixth grade, the question of square roots came up and the teacher said, "You can't do that yet. You'll get that next year." We didn't give her an argument. In high school Spanish, somebody wanted to know how to say, "Do you want me to go to the store?" "That involves the subjunctive mood," the teacher explained. "We won't get into that for about another month." We students waited patiently. But the American people don't like to feel they're anybody's "students." Those who wail in self-righteous exasperation about "What's the harm of talking," usually have no problem convincing others as naïve as they are. Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about. How can you insult an honest, earnest America that doesn't understand the danger in "just talking?" You can't tell him that, just as once upon a time he had to wait for square roots and the Spanish subjunctive, he now has to come back when he's picked up some sophistication about real world power politics. If you actually say that, however, you're saying to him, "Look. You're smart enough to argue immigration and higher taxes and voting rights for released felons but you're just not smart enough to understand the dangers of ‘just talling'!" That makes you an elitist. And elitists lose. Elitists may command the respect of the European peasantry but not of the American Common Man. On their level of global political comprehension I understand their notion of "no danger in talking." They correctly discern there's little likelihood that their leader will whip out a gun and shoot our leader. Or that their strike forces will choose the time when talks are in progress as the time to attack us when we least expect it. (Although that's exactly what Japan did to America at Pearl Harbor in December, 1941!) Hello, you who salute Nancy Pelosi for "having the guts to talk to the Syrians while President Bush cowers in fear from such an encounter." Are you sure there's no danger in spraying the political deodorant of legitimacy on terror-supporting thug dictators like Bashir Assad? Are you sure there's no danger of giving Assad as well as every other America-fearing and America-hating dictator on earth the idea that if they just play nice until Nancy Pelosi's party wins the White House they'll have the region and the world their way with America then taking credit for its artful surrender? There are more good people in certain bad countries than there are bad people in certain good countries. Syria and Iran, in particular, have cultured, educated people who know what freedom is and would love some of their own. Are you sure there's no "danger" taking the saber of your ill-informed good intentions and whacking their hearts out by dealing equally and respectably with their slave-master? Sex symbols must realize they're sexy and super-athletes must realize they're good athletes; but, oddly, most Americans aren't the slightest bit aware of America's awesome power to give hope to oppressed peoples. That power hit me in the 1950s when I saw a "Tailor" sign in the window of a private home in a communist country and figured, here's my chance to see the inside of a home here. When I walked in and announced myself as a American, Grandma threw herself on the sofa and started sobbing. She wasn't sobbing out of pain or joy, exactly. She was just emotionally overcome to meet a living representative of the one country powerful enough to maintain freedom and even export that freedom to oppressed nations. If that sounds kind of airborne to your weary ears, quick, while it's still warm; go to Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, or any other east European country and ask them what the mere existence of America meant to them during their decades of communist ensalvement. Can you imagine the glee of a defensive lineman in football when he sees the opposing quarterback, wide-receiver, and head coach arguing bitterly at each other right there on the playing field. That's the joy of the dictator watching Nancy Pelosi set up her own foreign policy lemonade stand across the street from the State Department. Woody Allen long ago turned it into a nice laugh when he suggested "What if Krushchev wanted peace and his interpreter wanted war?" With the Pelosi thing it's no laugh. The term "mixed signals" is much too tepid to describe what Pelosi is causing the world to receive from America. How about "chaotic schizophrenia?" Above all, in the Pelosi affair, are you sure there's no danger in America appearing as the obese woman who slips on the banana peel and kerplunks on her fanny just as the cream pie hits her in the face? Are you sure there's no danger in America coming off as a hapless and helpless buffoon in front of the monolithic dictators of the world? American power means freedom for America and others. Anything that militates against that power is a joy to Naziism, communism, or terrorism, depending on which decade we're talking about. We hardly have time or room to deal with that ridiculous Muslim-looking scarf Ms. Pelosi wrapped around her Italian-American Roman Catholic head. That scarf, the symbol of feminine subservience in the Islamic world, sent a separate diseased message of its own. It said, "I, a free woman from a free country, on this visit to your retrogressive vassal state, hereby signal that I consider you worthy of emulation." Good shot, Washington Post. Your identical words from one any conservative source couldn't have meant a fraction as much. Now I wish you would go back to your journalistic "steeple" and sin no more; though that may be a little too much to ask. In short, everything — quite literally everything — in international affairs, and more than we realize in our own ordinary lives, is "signals," "messages," the flashing impressions that flit through the air that either confirm or belie spoken words and proclaimed policies. During the Congress of Vienna in the early 1800s which set the framework for modern diplomacy, the great organizer Metternich was told by his servant one morning that the Russian ambassador had died during the night. "Hmm," frowned Metternich. "I wonder what he meant by that."
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