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Source: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009283
Another Murder in Beirut for Jim Baker to Contemplate
[Wall Street Journal] Editorial - Former Secretary of State James Baker has been saying that, when it comes to diplomacy, you don't "restrict your conversations to your friends" - shorthand for the view that the U.S. should engage Syria and Iran to find solutions in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. But Tuesday's murder of Lebanese Minister Pierre Gemayel might remind even Mr. Baker and his Iraq Study Group what some of those non-friends are all about. "The hand of Syria is all over" Gemayel's assassination, said Saad Hariri, the leader of the parliamentary bloc that helped evict the Syrian army in the spring of 2005. Mr. Hariri knows whereof he speaks: His father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was blown up with 22 others in February 2005, and the preliminary UN investigation offered a trail of evidence pointing to Damascus as the culprit. When it comes to Syria, do the sages of the Iraq Study Group really want the Bush Administration to seek the benediction of a country that stirs such mayhem in Beirut?