GOP senators to Obama: No Syria ambassador

An excerpt from the letter, which you can read in full here:

Engagement of hostile regimes in pursuit of U.S. interests is not necessarily bad policy, if it's part of a realistic strategy with measurable goals. But engagement for engagement's sake is not productive. However well-justified that engagement is, the U.S. pays a price for lending even a modicum of international legitimacy to a regime like Syria's.

[...] We believe that the Syrian government would like to be fully part of the legitimate international community without significantly changing [human rights] or other security policies. American appointment of an official ambassador to Damascus would likely be a partial concession to that ambition -- a concession that other countries with similar policies have not received. If the U.S. takes this step, it must be aimed at achieving tangible Syrian concessions in response.

It's perhaps worth mentioning here that the U.S. has envoys in dozens of countries with poor human rights records. If respect for human rights was a prerequisite, there would be no U.S. ambassador in Tashkent or Harare or Riyadh or Tripoli or Asmara...

The eight senators -- Jon Kyl, Pat Roberts, Kit Bond, Tom Coburn, John Barrasso, Mike Johanns, Robert Bennett, and an eighth (... whose name I can't make out) -- join Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., as on-the-record opponents of Robert Stephen Ford's nomination to the Syrian job.