Pandering Pelosi-crats

With all due respect to the Republican presidential hopefuls who debated last night, perhaps the best argument for keeping the Democrats out of power next November is the brazenly irresponsible way they handle national security issues: behaving as if the major threat to our national well-being is President Bush, not the jihadists, and putting the political agenda of Turkey-bashing ethnic lobbies and the hard left of the Democratic Party ahead of the war effort.

Exhibit number one is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who suffered twin embarrassments last week: In one instance, Democrats, under pressure from left-wing bloggers and the ACLU, tried to bring to the floor legislation updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would have crippled the ability of our intelligence agencies to monitor al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist groups. They were forced to pull that bill from the floor. In the second instance, a mini-revolt among Democrats forced Mrs. Pelosi to remove from the floor the Armenia genocide resolution that could do grave damage to Washington’s relations with a key NATO ally, Turkey — which is critically important in resupplying the 160,000-plus U.S. troops in Iraq.

Last week we editorialized against both of these irresponsible pieces of legislation, and temporarily at least, both have been stopped in their tracks. The Democrats’ FISA bill, pushed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes of Texas, would have amended FISA to grant due-process rights to aliens virtually anywhere in the world, including Islamist radicals fighting us in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Demonstrating leadership at its best, House Republicans led by Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Chief Deputy Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia offered a motion to recommit the legislation with instructions to prohibit the Democrats’ FISA measure from “interfering with surveillance needed to prevent Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda or any other foreign terrorist organization” from attacking the United States. This created a huge political problem for the Democrats, who were forced to choose between 1) killing their own bill and 2) voting against giving the government the authority to spy on Osama in Laden, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups seeking to murder Americans.

In the end, Mrs. Pelosi and other politically savvy Democrats, realizing that a vote for preserving Osama’s Fourth Amendment rights might be difficult to explain to constituents in “fly-over country,” pulled the bill from the floor. But the Democratic leadership’s FISA bill may well get a second life. The ACLU and left-wing bloggers believe the Democratic bill, known as the Restore Act, does not go far enough in protecting the “civil liberties” of innocent jihadists, and suggest that the Democrats are caving in to the Republicans on FISA. These people are spoiling for fight, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has said the Democrats will try to bring the bill back this week, may oblige them. In the next few days, we will learn whether Mr. Hoyer is bluffing, or whether the Pelosi-crats are politically suicidal enough to try to bully enough of the conservative, 47-member Blue Dog Coalition of moderate and conservative Democrats into siding with Osama on the FISA issue.

But lately, Democrats have become more assertive about standing up to Mrs. Pelosi, particularly on the Armenia genocide resolution. Last week, at least nine House Democrats urged her to withdraw the Armenia resolution from the floor, and the speaker, in a belated nod to common sense, said Wednesday that she was reconsidering her pledge to force a vote on the measure. Given the explosive situation in northern Iraq created by Kurdish PKK terrorist attacks against Turkey, it is grotesquely irresponsible for Congress to be beating up on this important American ally.