Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article yesterday asking, "Does our President have a moral compass?" The article links to a Barry Rubin article in the Jerusalem Post. The question involves some recent problems between Iraq and Syria. President Maliki of Iraq visited the President of Syria in August and offered him economic concessions in exchange for the return to Iraq of 271 Iraqi exiles involved in organizing terrorist attacks against Iraq. The offer was refused. The next day bombings in Iraq killed 100 people. The Iraqi government blamed Syria, and both countries recalled their ambassadors.
According to the article, this is the comment by the US State Department:
"We understand that there has been sort of mutual recall of the ambassadors. We consider that an internal matter. We believe that, as a general principle, that diplomatic dialogue is the best means to address the concerns of both parties. We are working with the Iraqis to determine who perpetrated these horrible acts of violence... We hope this doesn't hinder dialogue between the two countries."
Good grief! As the article points out, what are the concerns of both parties? Is Syria's concern that it would like to continue blowing up Iraqis? Is that a valid concern according to this administration? It is very nice to be diplomatic, but if no one is willing to stand up to people who continue to bomb innocent civilians, they will continue to bomb innocent civilians. What happened to our country? We used to defend freedom and protect the innocent. Have we given that up in favor of nice-sounding words that don't mean anything ?
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