Speaker Pelosi should take her press secretary’s advice.Last week, as Congress gaveled out for a long Easter recess and Pelosi hopped on a plane to chat with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, some observers noticed a telling omission from the House’s pre-recess scorecard. It seems Pelosi couldn’t find the time to schedule a vote expressing solidarity with the United Kingdom and condemning the thugocracy in Iran for kidnapping 15 British sailors operating under a UN mandate.  

As AP reported, the Senate condemned Iran’s latest act of barbarism “in the strongest possible terms” and called for the British sailors’ “immediate, safe and unconditional release.” But there was nothing but silence from the House side.

According to AP, when pressed on the omission, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly “said the speaker was reluctant to weigh in on the incident without knowing that such a message would do more good than harm. Daly said the British government had not asked Congress to try to pressure Tehran.” Daly explained that Pelosi and her lieutenants “agreed that inserting Congress into an international crisis while ongoing would not be helpful.”

Really? It seems the same could be said of Iraq. It is, after all, an ongoing international crisis. And by inserting itself, Congress has not been helpful. Further, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Malaki never asked Pelosi to set a timetable to withdraw American forces—in fact, he has done the very opposite—but that didn’t stop Pelosi.  

As to Pelosi’s sudden conversion to the “first, do no harm” doctrine, if only she had applied that standard to Iraq. Instead, she used backroom deals to build herself an anti-war/pro-pork majority.

These are strange messages for a U.S. leader to send abroad—silence on Iranian misconduct, handshakes for the Syrian dictator and a white flag in Iraq.

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