wow, what a surprise.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-w...4/iran-britain

Drudge headline says in this regard:

Quote:

PELOSI DIPLOMACY? Syrian officials claim key role...

PhillyRunner notes 18 U.S.C. s 953 with a raised eyebrow:

__________________
"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

I don't think this applies. Even if she had influenced Syria on behalf of Britain, does it meet the bar of "...disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States..."?

Furthermore as a member of the House of Representatives, does not she herself have the authority of the United States?

EDIT: or rather is she not an arbiter of authority of the United States?

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Free hat

Those are fair questions. I'm not accusing her of violating the law, so much as just raising the topic (along with my eyebrow) for discussion. After all, we don't even know if the Syrian officials' claim are true.

If their claims were true, though, there may be a colorable argument that the statute would apply when you consider that Pelosi would have been (1) carrying on intercourse with a foreign government (2) regarding soldiers who were captured (a) while serving as war-time allies of the United States and (b) while a military confrontation with the captors might or might not be in the offing. Perhaps the statute is more appropriately read with the narrow approach you suggest; I don't know.

Your second question is probably the key one -- i.e., whether she would have the "authority of the United States". In this regard, I don't know what the legal answer is. I'm not enough of a separation-of-powers expert to know the technical details. The only bit that I do know is that the State Department and the Department of Defense, the two primary instruments through which the US conducts foreign policy, are instruments of the Executive Branch. As you know, the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces and has the authority to appoint ambassadors and to conclude treaties. Yes, this latter power may only be exercised only with the advise and consent of the Senate. While the Senate may act as a control on the executive's foreign powers, Senators (and especially not Congresspersons) are not vested with any power to conduct foreign policy on their own behalf. After all, do we really want 535 individuals -- other than the president -- who can make foreign policy on behalf of the United States? In that circumstance, we would never have a coherent national foreign policy.

Even if one were to conclude that her putative actions were completely within the law, what bothers me, on a more practical level, is that it seems awfully inappropriate for the Speaker of the House to go on a diplomatic mission, against the President's wishes, to a state that is an acknowledged sponsor of organizations that are in a de facto state of war with the United States and its allies. A primary reason for vesting the power of foreign relations primarily in a single person (and his/her appointees) is that it becomes substantially easier to have and convey a unified presence to the rest of the world. Having a member of the opposing party go to what is, in effect, an enemy state sends a terrible message.

Again on a practical level, Pelosi's trip seems little more than a publicity stunt designed to say, in effect, "F*** you, President Bush. I can get a hospitable reception in a place that you think is 'bad'." And Bashar Assad is, of course, more than willing to assist her in giving President Bush the finger. But by undertaking this publicity stunt, she weakens the authority of the President as the arbiter of foreign policy. If Nancy Pelosi wants the Democratic party to control foreign policy, then she should work hard to make sure that that a Democrat is elected to the White House in '08. Until then, though, I think it is inappropriate for her to engage in what seems (at least to me) to be a publicity stunt designed to undermine the sitting president.

__________________
"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

There is now a story associated with the headline. It sounds more like the Syrians are claiming that they were involved in the negotiations, not that Pelosi had anything to do with it.

(Nevertheless, I maintain my crankyness about her going to Damascus in the first place as a matter of appearances.)

__________________
"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

PR - I agree that it's a fascinating course to discuss and further investigate. You raise some very good counterpoints to her trip. I, also, am not intimately familiar with the case law germane to the topic.

I'm curious if there is a precedent to such legislative junkets to questionably hostile states. I'll note that Syrian government is quite weak and its formal army is largely impotent. Officially the government is not hostile to us; though elements within the state that are stronger than the government are indeed hostile to the US and our allies.

I do not care this and former president's policy of not talking to quasi-enemy states. It seems petty and ineffective; it denies us the ability to influence in any positive way and hampers our ability to "keep a pulse" on the ground. I rather like reaching out to Syria specifically--it lends some credibility to a loosely western style government that is overshadowed by extremist elements.

What do you think of prominent citizens undertaking such junkets, i.e. Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson vis-a-vis an official representative of Congress?

At any rate, I'm going to dig a bit deeper when I have some time and see if there are any analogous examples and what became of them. Does not the State Department have the authority to suspend or deny any citizen travel to a state?

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Free hat

That's an interesting question. I suppose I'm not a fan of anyone conducting even informal diplomacy without the consent of the executive branch. If the citizen is going on some goodwill trip to build houses or something like that, I suppose I have no problem; but if there is an implicitly or explicitly diplomatic overtone to such a trip, I get nervous about the ability of the sitting President to conduct foreign policy as he (or hopefully one day, she) sees fit.

When I used to live in DC, I got to know a couple of foreign policy wonks, and they would tell me that the only thing they knew was important in foreign policy was predictability. That is, both your allies and enemies need to be able to predict your actions in response to anything they would do. (This apparently holds doubly so when you are the only superpower.) In theory, having non-sanctioned individuals running around conducting their own brand of diplomacy tends to undermine the predictability of state actions, and that worries me.

Arguably, that attitude (about valuing predictability) is a relic of the Cold War, in which MAD was the governing philosophy and people were just trying to keep the world powers from blowing up each other (and everyone else). In theory, though, I would think that the primacy of predictability should remain a useful principle so long as you are dealing with rational actors who are trying to gauge the consequences of their actions. Now, perhaps in the age of global terrorism, we aren't dealing with rational actors and so that principle of predictability falls to the side. In the case of irrational actors, though, I'm not sure what the proper course of action is, short of trying to confine their irrationality somewhere far away from the rest of us.

__________________
"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini