How Not to Think About Syria

Josh Hammer on Dec 13, 2024

The rapid demise of the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has taken every geopolitical analyst and self-proclaimed Middle East "expert" by storm. Following 53 years of brutal Assad family rule and 13 years of bloody civil war, the Syrian strongman abruptly fled for asylum in Moscow as rebels finalized their encircling of Damascus. In the blink of an eye, one of the two Ba'athist Arab states -- along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq before the U.S.-led 2003 invasion -- was no more.

Start with the obvious: Assad was a world-historical tyrant, even by bleak Arab world standards. He led with an iron fist, incarcerating political enemies and siccing his totalitarian security apparatuses on all those whom he deemed a threat. (You can see where Democrats may have gotten some ideas.) Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, he racked up a death toll of over half a million -- the majority civilian noncombatants. He has used chemical weapons against his own people on multiple occasions. He allied with the very worst actors on the world stage, and by the time he fled, his regime had become a satrapy held in joint custody by two rogue states: Russia and Iran.

There are thus many reasons to be ecstatic that Assad, a minority Alawite in a majority-Sunni country, is no more. From a Western geopolitical perspective, it is a clear positive that Russia has lost easy access to Mediterranean ports, and Iran has a gaping hole in its "Shiite crescent" of influence, which, in the not-so-distant past, extended from Iran through Iraq and Syria into Hezbollah-overrun Lebanon. And from a humanitarian perspective, one of the very worst butchers in recent global history has been deposed.

The problem, as is so often the case, is the thorny question of what comes next. And therein lies the rub.

The American foreign policy establishment is dominated by "right"-neoconservatives and left-neoliberals. Both camps seek, above all, to weaken and topple authoritarian regimes, and to replace them with leaders and government forms that better fit the idiosyncratic mold of Western liberal democracy. Thus, you have pundits such as Josh Rogin, a columnist for the neoconservative/neoliberal Washington Post, who posted this thoughtless dreck to X last weekend: "Syria is free. The rebels won. The people liberated themselves from tyranny. ... The world should celebrate Syria's liberation & help it succeed."

Come again? Apparently, "free(dom)" now means ... Sharia law. Did we just forget about the Arab Spring? Never let stubborn facts get in the way of a handy one-size-fits-all narrative.

But it is grossly irresponsible to ignore the new bosses in Damascus. The rebels who toppled Assad are led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani, a man who has spent the better part of his adult life as a peripatetic jihadist mercenary. Al-Julani has, in the past, been active with al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq, and Al-Nusra Front. These are all radical Islamic terrorist organizations, plain and simple. Al-Julani now leads Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which is -- you guessed it -- yet another U.S.-recognized foreign terrorist organization. Al-Julani, who has ditched his trademark jihadist camo for sleeker Western-style garb, says he is a changed man. "I believe that everyone in life goes through phases and experiences," he explained to CNN. This followed al-Julani publishing a statement asserting that "diversity is a strength."

Call him the DEI jihadi.

If your antennae are going off, you're not alone. A grizzled, Recep Tayyip Erdogan-backed jihadist now spouting liberal platitudes about "diversity" is perhaps the single least persuasive political operation of my lifetime. Dunderheads in Foggy Bottom and Langley, Virginia, must be happy, but only a dimwit or a ruling class neoconservative/neoliberal moralist -- but I repeat myself -- could be naive enough to believe this rubbish.

On the whole, it is probably a good thing that Assad is no more. It is important that two of America's leading geopolitical foes, Russia and Iran, suffer such a massive loss. For Iran in particular, it is the second massive loss in a span of two and a half months, following Israel's historic crippling of Hezbollah.

But we should not pretend that the rise of HTS and al-Julani is an unambiguous good. It isn't. There is a very real risk of a full-on ISIS/Taliban-style caliphate taking over Syria. That would be a humanitarian disaster for the region's Kurds and Druze, a likely strategic disaster for Israel and America's moderate Arab allies, and a more insidious disaster in its potential activation of jihadi sleeper cells throughout the West. And Turkey's Erdogan, an Islamist strongman and Hamas mollycoddler who harbors frightening neo-Ottoman ambitions, is emboldened like never before.

Of course, al-Julani and HTS could also turn Syria into a giant Ivy League-style DEI bureaucracy. Maybe the Harvard faculty lounge would then self-deport to Damascus. At least that sounds like a win.

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