ANOTHER FOREIGN-POLICY FLOP – AT 8:55 A.M. ET:  Almost under the radar, the United States has returned its ambassador to Syria.  We have not had an ambassador in Damascus since 2005.

Syria did absolutely nothing to win this concession from the United States.  Enemy states apparently need do nothing to get a reward under the Obama administration.

And how has Syria responded to this new opportunity to heal relations with Washington?  How do you think?  Superlative reporter Benny Avni reports for the New York Post:

How many times does the Obama administration have to get bitten before it stops leading with an "open hand"?

Hillary Clinton this week called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to respond to recent US overtures by distancing his country from Iran. Yesterday, Assad responded by signing a new friendship pact with a grinning Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. More, he mocked our secretary of state: "We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreement."

The latest US overture was the naming of Robert Ford last week as our next ambassador to Syria, five years after we recalled our last ambassador to protest Syria's suspected involvement in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

And...

Meanwhile, Assad calmly pockets every gift we shower on him, then thumbs his nose at us. We've yet to get a single meaningful concession.

Five years after the (American-supported) peaceful Cedar Revolution drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon, that nation is back under near-complete Syrian control. Lebanon's new prime minister, Hariri's son Saad, recently had no choice but to go and pay obeisance to Assad -- kissing the ring of his father's killer.

Can you name a single foreign-policy success for this administration?  I can't.

But I'm told that some Obama advisers are harder-headed -- starting with Hillary herself, whatever she has to say in public. Assad's show of solidarity with Ahmadinejad yesterday should bolster the skeptics' case. And there are more skeptics in Congress: Robert Ford's Senate confirmation could prove problematic for the administration.

A great place for the GOP to take a firm stand. 

Avni suggests that Obama, for once, show some backbone, using as a hook one of Syria's latest acts of defiance, its refusal to open its nuclear program to international inspection.

He has enough reason now to announce that, until Syria opens up its nuclear facilities for inspections, no US ambassador will be returning to Damascus.

That won't happen.  It might "offend" the Arab world, and we wouldn't want to do that, would we?  We must show how much more sophisticated we are than BUSH (!!).

And yesterday the administration indicated that sanctions on Iran, promised for the first of the year, may not happen until April, and that assumes we can get the UN on board.

The president is great at showing toughness when dealing with Republicans.  When dealing with foreign enemies, it's an entirely different story.

February 26, 2010