WITH THE DEMOCRATS pushing so hard for withdrawal from Iraq, the party seems unaware that they may be making the job much harder for themselves should they get the chance to govern again someday. After all, the United States has many vital strategic interests in the region, and it is not obvious how a plan no more elaborate than bringing our troops home from Iraq will protect, for instance, the free flow of affordable Persian Gulf oil.

The Democrats are playing a dirty game in the Middle East, where, just like Arab regimes, they are using proxies to wage war--except their war is against the Bush administration. Iraq is one venue, and Syria another.

A few weeks ago, the Syrian-born American businessman, Ibrahim Suleiman returned from the Knesset, announcing that an Israeli-Syrian deal is possible within six months, even though many observers are not sure the self-appointed peace delegate actually represents anyone. Still, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyassah has reported that Suleiman is the brother of Bajhat Suleiman, a security officer whose name has popped up repeatedly in the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

And yet even if there is no genuine relationship between Suleiman and and Bashar al-Asad's government, the fact is that Syria would like nothing more right now than to be tied up in a peace process. With an international tribunal being formed to hand down indictments in the Hariri murder, as well as the assassinations of other Lebanese figures, the 41-year-old Syrian president is afraid of, at best, having to serve out the rest of his life-long term scarred with a Milosevic-like notoriety.

"The whole Syrian peace initiative is a smokescreen," says Eli Khoury, a Beirut advertising executive running a civil-society campaign called NOW Lebanon. "The regime wants to be insulated from the tribunal."

With the prospect of a Syrian-Israeli peace deal, no matter how illusory, even the French and the Saudis, solid U.S. allies in the Lebanese arena, would be hard pressed to see Damascus punished for all the blood it has shed throughout the region.

The Israelis themselves may come to welcome talks with a state that floats trial peace balloons while simultaneously threatening war on the Golan Heights. A bogus Syria track may seem more appealing than getting locked into a room with the Hamas-controlled PA, especially as Jerusalem is no doubt looking past the present administration and wondering if the next White House will demand concessions the Bush team did not. Indeed, the Democrats are already throwing their weight around and criticizing Olmert for interfering in U.S. politics. And yet Nancy Pelosi's party has clearly played a very negative role in regional affairs.

One Damascus-based researcher explained that in March a group of Democratic operatives asked for a briefing in preparation for Pelosi's Syria trip. "I explained that they were walking into a minefield," he told me. "The regime is causing trouble throughout the region, and then there are plenty of human rights issues with their own imprisoned dissidents. And all they said was, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." In other words, don't bug us with the details, we're all about Bush.

Another source explains that Syrian activists believe Pelosi's trip gave the Asad regime much needed breathing room. "Whether there is a real connection or not, political dissidents note that Anwar al-Bunni was sentenced to five years in prison in the wake of Pelosi's visit."

Another opposition figure, Muhammad Ma'moun Homsi, a former Syrian MP who was imprisoned for five years beginning in 2001, and who has now fled Syria, revealed that he had sent a letter to Pelosi asking her not to come to Damascus. In an interview on an Arabic-language website, Homsi added that the idea of engaging such regimes is "a very dangerous proposition cause next will be a call to engage terrorist organizations."

And now some regional observers believe that Ibrahim Suleiman is a signal to the Democrats that they have an eager partner in Damascus. Walid Choucair, a columnist for the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, writes that Suleiman is part of a Syrian "wager on the changed position of a future administration (and) the Democrats coming to power in 2008."