Thursday, December 07, 2006

The Delusional James Baker   [John Podhoretz]

"As for Syria, Baker said that as Secretary of State to President George H. W. Bush he made 15 trips there in the early 1990s, 'and we made them change 25 years of policy.'" This sentence appears in today's Los Angeles Times. And it's interesting. Because Syrian policy changed in no way during the first Bush administration. Rather, it was Baker who muddied U.S. policy for the purpose of sucking up to Syria so that he could claim its support, or at least its refusal to oppose, the Persian Gulf War. To that end, Baker criticized his own State Department's inclusion of Syria on the list of states that sponsor and commit acts of terrorism. Quoth Baker at the time: "We believe that, so far, Syria was put on the list without any justification." Syria's inclusion, he complained, was "meant for political objectives rather than analyzing an objective situation.”

Syria, then and now, is one of the world's two leading state sponsors of terrorism, and Baker knew it, and he lied through his teeth. But the key thing to note here is that Syria did nothing differently after Baker's suck-up from what it had done before. Nothing.

If Baker really believes his actions changed Syrian policy during his tenure as Secretary of State, then he's not the clever and cynical man I took him for. Rather, he's a delusional fool. (Hat tip: Jonathan R.)

12/07 09:38 PMShare