At yesterday’s year-end White House press conference, President Bush let his feelings about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be known. BBC News reports:

“My patience ran out on President Assad a long time ago,” Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House.

“The reason why is because he houses Hamas, he facilitates Hizballah, suiciders go from his country into Iraq, and he destabilizes Lebanon.”

For that, the President gets a B+. He left out Syria’s active interest in conspiring with Iran on WMD. The Assad regime constitutes the full spectrum of Middle East threats: Baathist tyranny, Sunni terrorism, Shia terrorism, Iraq sabotage, and coddling of Iran.

Additionally, the Syrian regime exercises suzerainty by assassination in Lebanon. Lebanese statesmen actually live in their offices for fear of Syrian bombs. The Lebanese government is in near-literal paralysis. George Bush’s pronouncement is a welcome return to common sense. While Assad took a state hostage before the eyes of the world, Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi thought it only right to pay a visit to Syria’s President “with the assurance that we came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace.” Recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suffered a similar lapse in reaching out to Syria during peace talks in Annapolis.

In early January, President Bush is taking a diplomatic tour of the region. He’ll visit a handful of countries—none of them Syria. One crucial benefit of progress in Iraq is that it allows the U.S. to exercise a credibly muscular foreign policy. In so doing, we can embolden Syrian and Lebanese reformers (such as the March 14 coalition), who must have wept while Nancy Pelosi flattered their tormentor.