The Republicans have two familiar things to cry about this weekend. The first is the media’s coverage of Chocolate Jesus. The second is the fact that Speaker Pelosi is ignoring the State Department’s advice and leading a congressional delegation to Syria. (She’s also going to speak before the Knesset). Here’s some whining from the White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, filling in for an unfortunately ailing Tony Snow:

…the speaker “should take a step back and think about the message that it sends.”

“This is a county that is a state sponsor of terror, one that is trying to disrupt the Senora government in Lebanon and one that is allowing foreign fighters to flow into Iraq from its borders,” Perino said.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “probably really wants people to come, and have a photo opportunity, and have tea with him, and have discussions about where they’re coming from. But we just think it’s a really bad idea,” Perino said.

Well…let’s see.

The White House thinks it is a really bad idea.

I gotta let that sink in for a little bit.

The White House thinks it is a really bad idea.

Okay. I know that the right wing has a thing about sipping tea in a foreign country. They teased Ambassador Joseph Wilson relentlessly for writing:

I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country’s uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

But I just don’t think they’ve got their talking points worked out very well. Are the American people supposed to share their bizarre aversion to tea? And, if so, is this supposed to hurt the popularity of the Speaker?

Here are some facts. We have an embassy in Damascus. This isn’t Cuba we’re talking about here…or Iran. It’s freaking Syria. It’s a nice country to visit, or so noz tells me. The government’s run by strange cultist Muslims with an affinity for fascism…but other than that, they’re not so awful. They’re certainly not appreciably different from the Saudis, although they do have a much harder time making friends (it’s the oil and gas thing).

The Syrians have a weird kind of alliance with Iran. It’s not really based on anything concrete. After all, the Iranians don’t tolerate the Syrian leadership’s Alawite sect of Shi’a Islam in their country. I think their alliance is partly a legacy of the Cold War and partly because the Iranians were the only ones willing to keep up the fight against Israel after the Egyptians, Jordanians, and Saudis caved. I don’t know. Maybe the ancient rift in the Syrian/Iraq branches of the Ba’ath Party had something to do with it, too. Who cares?

The bottom line is that Syria can be peeled away from Iran quite easily. They don’t enjoy being a pariah. They don’t want bad relations with the United States. Prior to the war in Iraq they were happy to torture anyone one we needed tortured. I mean, that’s a true act of friendship right there. All they want is the Golan Heights back. You want Syria to stop doing things we don’t like? Help them get their land back and stop invading their neighbors and giving them huge refugee problems.

The Syrian regime is pretty awful as far as governments go. But, they aren’t a danger to us. They’re not really a danger to Israel either. Not by themselves. The worst thing they do is provide a refuge for some of the more militant Palestinian guerrillas. And they’ve helped Hezbollah as part of their overall domination of Lebanon post civil war. The totality of their behavior is annoying to Israel and probably to about 98% of their own citizens. I’ve noted that John Bolton doesn’t care for them either.

Nonetheless, I hope Speaker Pelosi and Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Henry Waxman and Tom Lantos of California, Louise Slaughter of New York and Nick Rahall of West Virginia, and Ohio Republican David Hobson all have a great time in both Jerusalem and Damascus. I hope they learn something useful. I think that would be a really good idea.