Wright Redux: The flap over Nancy Pelosi's Syria trip echoes a 20-year-old fight...

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Wright Redux
The flap over Nancy Pelosi's Syria trip echoes a 20-year-old fight with a previous Democratic House Speaker -- and is being driven by the same right-wing Republican hawks.

By William M. LeoGrande and Jim Lobe
Web Exclusive: 04.09.07


Nancy Pelosi had better watch her back. The last time a Democratic Speaker of the House tried to help extricate the United States from a stalemated war, it cost him his job.

Twenty years ago, congressional Democrats rebelled against President Ronald Reagan's covert "contra" war to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, threatening to cut off the funds for it, just as they are now threatening to cut off funds for the war in Iraq. Then, as now, a Republican president was determined to stay the course despite mounting evidence that the war was unwinnable and only diplomacy could end it. With the executive branch bereft of ideas on how to escape the quagmire but dead-set against engaging its perceived adversaries, Congressional leaders stepped into the breach.

Speaker Jim Wright, with the quiet support of Republican realists, took an active role in support of the 1987 Central American Peace Accord sponsored by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, whose efforts won him the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Despite the Reagan administration's bitter denunciation of the Arias plan, Wright not only endorsed it, he worked actively to bring the Sandinistas together with their opponents to make the plan work. For this he was vilified by Reagan officials, foremost among them Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, who accused Wright of staging "an unbelievable melodrama," when he met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. "This was not forward movement," Abrams charged. "This was screwing up the process."

On Capitol Hill, Abrams's charges were echoed by Congressmen Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, who launched a campaign that eventually forced Wright to resign for alleged ethical lapses. "My role in the peace process contributed more than any other one thing to the determination of the Republican rightwing to destroy my effectiveness," Wright wrote later. "The determination to try to destroy my personal character originated with people like Gingrich, Elliott Abrams, and Dick Cheney."

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Last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to the Middle East, stopping in Syria to meet with President Bashar al-Assad -- much to the dismay of President Bush, Cheney, and Abrams, who is now deputy national security adviser and the White House's top aide on the Middle East. As a second-tier member of the Axis of Evil, Syria is on the State Department's list of countries that support international terrorism, and the administration's policy toward Damascus has been one of hostility and isolation. Unfortunately, Syria's cooperation is probably indispensable for stabilizing the security situation in neighboring Iraq-- a reality that led the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to recommend that Washington directly engage both Syria and Iran diplomatically, just as Republican realists twenty years ago supported dialogue with Nicaragua. President Bush has ignored that recommendation, as he has ignored many of the Study Group's conclusions.

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protecting Americans from terrorism. We Democrats need to stand 100% behind Pelosi and all the other Democrats who are daring to speak up. Shame on those so-called "Democrats" in Congress who are not backing Pelosi up. I support Pelosi. She is doing a great job in every respect.