In a season when the question of appeasement hangs in the air at almost every discussion of the war, the news can’t get more dramatic than the disclosure that Senator Nelson — who sits on both the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees and is a member of the Democratic Party that is about to accede to the majority — fetched up in Damascus yesterday for a meeting with the Syrian strongman, Bashar al-Assad. Or that, as our Eli Lake reports today, Senators Specter, Dodd, and Kerry are also expected in the Syrian capital.

They are pursuing this mission in defiance of the administration. President Bush made clear his opinion of the mission through his press secretary, Tony Snow, who said, “We don’t think that members of Congress ought to be going there … We just don’t think it’s appropriate.” Mr. Bush also issued a bold statement expressing his view of the Syrian regime, saying, “The United States supports the Syrian people’s desire for democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression. Syrians deserve a government whose legitimacy is grounded in the consent of the people, not brute force.”

Mr. Bush named some of the opponents of Syria’s Baathist rulers. “The Syrian regime should immediately free all political prisoners, including Aref Dalila, Michel Kilo, Anwar al-Bunni, Mahmoud Issa, and Kamal Labwani,” the statement said. The president seems to comprehend the significance of the Syria Accountability Act of 2003, which — as a matter of law — establishes that it is “the policy of the United States” that, among other things, Syria should bear responsibility for all attacks committed by Hezbollah and other terrorist groups with offices or other facilities in Syria or bases in areas of Lebanon occupied by Syria and that the secretary of state will continue to list Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism until Syria ends its support for terrorism.

The sad truth is that the senators on the road to Damascus are probably less dangerous in Syria than they are in Washington. At least they cannot vote from there. And the likelihood of them actually achieving anything by way of diplomacy is about zilch. Certainly the diplomats have tried and failed. James A. Baker III visited Damascus 11 times between 1990 and 1992 and produced basically nothing. Warren Christopher abased himself by visiting Damascus 29 times between 1993 and 1996. Word got out that on some occasions, the Syrian dictator, Bashar’s father, Hafez, refused even to meet with the supplicating State Department secretary. Other times, Iranian arms shipments passed through the Syrian airport to anti-Israel terrorists as the American government plane carrying Mr. Christopher sat nearby on the tarmac.

Mr. Specter has been back and forth to Damascus repeatedly, with no apparent results. Successes are sometimes a long time in the making, and peace sometimes comes suddenly after years of resistance. One can argue there is little or no harm in trying. But our elected head of state doesn’t think so, and the balance of the evidence stands with the analysis of Daniel Pipes, who has been saying for years that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Syria does not want peace. If all the energy that has been devoted in the past decades to trying to negotiate with the Assad regime had been devoted instead to trying to bring freedom, democracy, and the rule of law to Syria, it is hard to imagine but that it would have led to more progress for the citizens of Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Israel and more security for the citizens of America.