O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers! – Mark Antony to Caesar’s corpse – Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has donned her diplomat’s hat and gone to visit Syrian President Bashar Assad knowing full well that Bashar Assad is a butcher who stands accused of murdering Lebanese statesmen, and of launching a decades-long war of terror and assassination against Lebanon.
Perhaps Nancy Pelosi is comfortable in the company of butchers – she’s long been an ardent supporter of those members of the abortion industry who have killed 40 million unborn babies without a murmur of protest from the present Speaker of the House.
If Mrs. Pelosi doesn’t want to believe her host is a butcher, she should pop over to Lebanon and have a chat with Father Joseph Abu Ghazale, the parish priest at the Maronite Catholic Church of St Anthony’s, which is a bare 50 yards from the site where Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel was gunned down by Assad’s assassins.
Gemayel 34, and his bodyguard were killed Nov. 21 while driving through Beirut‘s Christian neighborhood of Jdeideh. His car was rammed by another vehicle. Then, witnesses said, at least three gunmen leaped out of the vehicle and sprayed his car with 20 bullets from automatic weapons equipped with silencers. They fired at near point-blank range through the driver’s window at Gemayel, who was at the wheel, and at his bodyguard seated in the passenger seat.
His murder was “an operation trying to kill the hope of the people,” Father Ghazale told the Catholic News Service. Asked whom he thought was behind the assassination, Father Ghazale said: “Syria, for sure. Thirty years of Syrian occupation weren’t enough – they are still trying to kill the Gemayel family. But with this death they have killed one Gemayel and created thousands more in the young Lebanese people.”
Bashar Assad’s government thugs are also held responsible for the assassination of many of Lebanon‘s leaders including:
Gebran Tueni, a Lebanese patriot, member of parliament, and publisher of one of Lebanon‘s leading newspapers. He was a well-known opponent of Syrian interference in Lebanon.
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri who was assassinated on February 14, 2005 when explosives equivalent to around 300 kg of C4 were detonated as his motorcade drove past the Saint George Hotel in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. As documented in the U.N. investigation, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad made his motives and threats well known, particularly to former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. According to the UN report, Assad told Hariri: “I will crush anyone who tries to oppose our decisions.”
In a February 16 statement Elias Bejjani, Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC) reported that three civilians were killed and twenty-four others were seriously wounded when two minibuses were exploded as they ferried passengers to work, to run errands and to Bible study classes on Tuesday February 13, 2007. Residents of the Lebanese Christian village of Ain Alaq in the mountainous North Metn region awoke to two bomb blasts and the sight of ruptured buses and staggering, blood-soaked passengers.
Said Bejjani: “This new criminal and cowardly assault is a new chapter in the unfolding vicious cycle of terror, intimidation, assassinations and the sending of explosive and murderous messages by Syria and Iran, the two members of the Axis of Evil, at the expense of Lebanon‘s stability and the lives of the Lebanese people.
“Syria has been abusing Lebanon since 1975, using it as an arena for its dirty wars, acts of Mafioso and terrorism. Iran joined Syria actively through Hezbollah in 1982. The two countries carry out their anti-Lebanese, anti-peace and anti-world destructive schemes in and via Lebanon through armed Lebanese and Palestinian ideological, fundamentalist, and Mafia militias. These armed terrorist organizations are fully under the command of Syria and Iran, and are fully sponsored and run by them in their arming, financing, training, issuing directions, and decision-making processes. First among these groups is Hezbollah, the Iranian military brigade in Lebanon…
“Lebanon, the land of the Holy cedars and 7,000 years of civilization is being subjected to the ugliest and most dangerous war plot that is orchestrated and conducted by the Axis of Evil through Hezbollah and its Lebanese coup d’état appendages. This war is bluntly targeting Lebanon‘s state institutions, its democratic constitution, its multicultural communal shared living paradigm, and its freedoms, peace and stability.
“Within this context, last Tuesday the Axis of Evil countries perpetrated directly or indirectly through their Lebanese mercenaries and militias the bloody assault against Christian civilians in Ain Alaq, the peaceful and tranquil Christian Lebanese village.
Just what does Mrs. Pelosi hope to accomplish by being meek and gentle with these butchers? Does she expect Assad to throw in the towel, get his murderous assassins out ofLebanon, stop supporting Hezbollah, or prevent Syrian and Iranian terrorists from crossing his borders over into Iraq to kill her fellow Americans.
She will, I’m sure, get a warm welcome from Assad. He has to be wallowing in appreciation for her presently successful efforts to tie the hands of the administration and stymie the President’s new surge policy. Like Osama bin Laden he must be overjoyed at the prospect of Mrs. Pelosi and her party succeeding in alerting al Qaeda that they need hang in there for only a year before U.S. troops are withdrawn and Iraq is handed over to them lock, stock and barrel so they can get on with the business of killing innocent people by the tens of thousands.
Come home Nancy, and leave the business of wartime diplomacy to the adults.