About Last Week...
Well, Mostly About Yesterday
Well, I guess they need to start calling it the Take a Ba’ath Party, amiright?
Hey-ooo – I’m here in the lounge until Thursday – tip you waitress and try the veal!
Yesterday-ish, history’s most genocidal ophthalmologist, Bashar al-Assad, was finally toppled from his laughably precarious position as president/dictator/what have you of Syria.
He survived 25 years in power and a brutal years-long civil war but was somehow run out of the country in just the last ten days – your family has taken longer vacations at Disney World than it took for the rebels to finally toss the bad doctor.
Russia – his main ally over the past umpteen years – has confirmed he has fled the country but won’t quite say exactly where he fled to – wanna guess?
So why now, why so embarrassingly quickly this time? Speaking of Russia…
There is a widely used term in international diplomacy called the “domino effect.” One country falls, then the one next to it, and she told two friends and so on and so on. In this case, we seem to have a Tri-Omino effect.
During the civil war – in which is actually is certain that Assad used nasty chemical weapons on his own populace – he was saved by Iran and Russia.
Iran dispatched the Hezbollah militants it controlled in Lebanon and Russia just went all Death from Above/Plain of Jars on the opposition.
This time, however, Russia (while other Middle East regimes flirted with Moscow, Syria has been its only ‘steady’ in the region) was/is rather busy in Ukraine. And Iran very recently had its teeth kicked in by Israel so is in no position to offer any help.
Even if Iran wanted to call up Hezbollah to help Assad, it wouldn’t have worked. First, lots and lots of Hezbollah folks were recently dispatched and, second, no member of Hezbollah is answering their cell phone ever again. Kaboom.
Which brings in the third reason Assad fell – Israel. Gaza loonies attack Israel, Israel decides it won’t stand for that, Iran/Hezbollah decide to help Hamas, Israel says very much hell to the no, and Assad is left with nothing to fall back on, except – one assumes – a Russian plane on which to flee the country and the possibility he could restart his eye doctor practice.
As for benefiting the Syrian people, that is not at all yet clear. Certain western powers have called the rebels terrorists – almost certainly true this time – but others have basically said “well, will it be worse? A half-million people died in the civil war and Assad disappeared opponents on a very regular basis, so…”
The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was/is the leader of the revolt and has been likened to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Not good at all.
But, ideologically, it may be “Taliban Lite.” “Bad Taste, Less Killing,” may be its slogan.
Not at all in anyway good, but what exactly is in store is completely up in the air as it is very doubtful that even HTS thought they could this in 10 days.
As for the US response, the timing of the overthrow is not at all a coincidence. Not only could Assad’s Russian and Iranians not help out, we here stateside are in the middle of something rather important ourselves. So while Joe Biden finally decided to give the green light to using American missiles to attack Russia directly, even His Addledness could not even considering poking his nose into the issue, especially considering Donald Trump’s rather consistent “no wars” mantra.
Speaking of mantras, it seems the DC pressers thinks if it uses the word “disruption” or some version thereof it might just convince the world that Trump’s cabinet picks are spooky dangerous.
It’s not working – While I criticized Pete Hegseth for his craven “I’ll stop drinking if you give me the job” statement RE Secretary of Defense, he may still get it and, to be blunt, that may not be a bad thing.
Again, the criticism wasn’t meant to imply that everything said about him is true – it’s not, not nearly – but his offer, though oddly enough it seems not to have hurt.
It also seems that the media is focusing its fire now more on RFK Jr. at Health and Human Services. That could still be a tough confirmation, but one tactic could be to play up the folks chosen for the semi-independent, semi-subordinate public health roles. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is getting surprisingly little flack for being the National Institutes of Health director nominee and even Dr. Marty Makary at the FDA seems to be a done deal.
This week’s epigram is yet again not one, but a quick vid on why Italy was treated differently after World War II – Short answer: “Because Italy was, well, Italy…”
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Update - Biden has ordered air strikes, which are happening now-ish (7 or so eastern time) - guess he wants to mess with Trump as much as he messed with Kamala.