Nancy Pelosi had better watch her back. The last time a Democratic Speaker of the House tried to help extricate the United States from a stalemated war, it cost him his job.
Twenty years ago, congressional Democrats rebelled against President Ronald Reagan's covert "contra" war to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, threatening to cut off the funds for it, just as they are now threatening to cut off funds for the war in Iraq. Then, as now, a Republican president was determined to stay the course despite mounting evidence that the war was unwinnable and only diplomacy could end it. With the executive branch bereft of ideas on how to escape the quagmire but dead-set against engaging its perceived adversaries, Congressional leaders stepped into the breach.
Speaker Jim Wright, with the quiet support of Republican realists, took an active role in support of the 1987 Central American Peace Accord sponsored by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, whose efforts won him the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Despite the Reagan administration's bitter denunciation of the Arias plan, Wright not only endorsed it, he worked actively to bring the Sandinistas together with their opponents to make the plan work. For this he was vilified by Reagan officials, foremost among them Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, who accused Wright of staging "an unbelievable melodrama," when he met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. "This was not forward movement," Abrams charged. "This was screwing up the process."
On Capitol Hill, Abrams's charges were echoed by Congressmen Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, who launched a campaign that eventually forced Wright to resign for alleged ethical lapses. "My role in the peace process contributed more than any other one thing to the determination of the Republican rightwing to destroy my effectiveness," Wright wrote later. "The determination to try to destroy my personal character originated with people like Gingrich, Elliott Abrams, and Dick Cheney."
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Last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to the Middle East, stopping in Syria to meet with President Bashar al-Assad -- much to the dismay of President Bush, Cheney, and Abrams, who is now deputy national security adviser and the White House's top aide on the Middle East. As a second-tier member of the Axis of Evil, Syria is on the State Department's list of countries that support international terrorism, and the administration's policy toward Damascus has been one of hostility and isolation. Unfortunately, Syria's cooperation is probably indispensable for stabilizing the security situation in neighboring Iraq-- a reality that led the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to recommend that Washington directly engage both Syria and Iran diplomatically, just as Republican realists twenty years ago supported dialogue with Nicaragua. President Bush has ignored that recommendation, as he has ignored many of the Study Group's conclusions.
Pelosi has pledged that congressional Democrats will push for implementation of the Study Group's recommendations even if the president will not. Her diplomacy in Damascus has put her on a collision course with administration hardliners like Cheney and Abrams. Cheney blasted Pelosi's "bad behavior," and a Washington Post editorial called her mission "foolish " -- echoes of how the Post denigrated Jim Wright's efforts twenty years ago as "reckless."
As the ranking Republican congressman on the Iran-Contra Committee that investigated the Reagan administration's secret arms sales to Iran and funding of the Nicaraguan contras, Cheney defended Reagan's officials, including Abrams, who lied to Congress and ignored the law. Cheney argued that presidential power in foreign policy is essentially unlimited and that Congress can and should do nothing to constrain it -- a view he has faithfully carried with him into the White House.
No president likes to see Congress take an active role in foreign policy, especially when the two branches are at odds over what policy should be. But although the Constitution gives the president the leading role in international affairs, it does not give him an exclusive mandate. When a president insists on pursuing policies that, despite mounting costs, show no promise of success and have lost the support of the American people, he should not be surprised to find Congress becoming more assertive.
In the 1980s, Cheney and Abrams made clear their contempt for Congress and disdain for diplomacy. For them, foreign policy took on the tenor of a moral crusade, making compromise anathema. Despite their best efforts, Congress cut the funding for Reagan's wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador, eventually forcing President George H. W. Bush to embrace the peace plans that Reagan's hawks abhorred. The plans worked, and the wars ended on terms that safeguarded U.S. interests. The hardline crusaders like Cheney and Abrams, despite their moral certitude, turned out to be wrong. Twenty years later, they still think diplomacy is for sissies, they still think Congress has no legitimate role in foreign policy, and they are still wrong.
William M. LeoGrande is dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC, and author of Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992. Jim Lobe is the chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS).
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