One of the nation’s leading experts on Islam says he believes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is going to be "unpleasantly surprised" when she discovers that you can not negotiate with countries that harbor terrorists. Pelosi led a Congressional delegation to Da mascus Syria, where they met with Syrian leader Bashar Assad.

Hear This Report

Pelosi and the other delegates said the meeting was "only the beginning" of "a constructive dialogue." However, President George W. Bush has denounced the trip as counterproductive, and Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch agrees.

Spencer says he believes Pelosi and her colleagues are going to be "unfortunately, unpleasantly surprised when they find out that nothing really is going to be satisfactory and this is all still going to go on, regardless of whatever concessions" they make to the Syrians. Besides, he points out, the Democratic congresswoman has no foreign policy authority anyway.

"What authority does she have ? None, ultimately, to set any policies at all," the Jihad Watch spokesman notes. "But evidently she is anticipating, probably, being in power, being an associate of the [U.S.] president in 2009," he says.

Still, Spencer contends, when it comes to negotiating with terrorist-harboring Islamic regimes, Pelosi and other Democrats simply do not get it. "I think it’s just another species of the appeasement that the Democratic Party is trying to pursue," he says. "They still believe that if they give the right combination of concessions to various Islamic states and majority Muslim countries, they will find there will be peace — and I think they’re going to be unpleasantly surprised."

4/5/07 - References corrected in paragraphs 3 and 4