An absurd defense

Re “Forget Pelosi. What about Syria?” Opinion, April 11

The true absurdity in Robert Malley’s pathetic defense of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) is when he refers to the European Union, which is notoriously weak and indecisive when dealing with terrorism. Syria is a state sponsor of terrorism, which means it engages in the murder of innocent civilians, be they Westerners, Israelis or Arabs. Terrorist nations want the U.S. to be divided and indecisive so they can continue their barbarous actions, and Pelosi is only too happy to go along with this. There’s nothing to negotiate with nations that brazenly engage in murdering innocent civilians.

Democrats and their accomplices condemn America for alleged torture, believing the complaints of captured terrorists, while praising thug dictators and anti-democratic regimes. The foreign policy end-around by “president” Pelosi is further proof of this and of their outrageous hypocrisy.

PAT MURPHY

Pacific Palisades

*

Malley is right to discount the Israeli argument that Syria is more interested in restoring “its hegemony over Lebanon” than in regaining the Golan Heights and normalizing relations with the United States and Israel.

But why does Malley take Israel’s objections to negotiations with Syria at face value? Given Israel’s intensive, illegal settlement of the Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian West Bank over the last two decades, how can anyone still believe that Israel prefers peace with its neighbors over the prospect of establishing a “Greater Israel?”

KEN GALAL

San Francisco