Pete Hegseth's Stand

posted by Rajan Laad at American Thinker 

Since President Trump nominated Pete Hegseth as the next U.S. Defense Secretary, the knives have been out for him.

First, they belittled him by claiming he was merely co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend." Even now, in their myriad hit pieces, Hegseth is referred to as the former Fox News host, the implication being that he is a lightweight.

After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, Hegseth was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard. He volunteered to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan and was awarded the Bronze Star. Yet he’s never referred to as a military veteran.

Let's look at the allegations so far.

NBC News reported that 10 current and former Fox employees said Hegeseth drank in ways that concerned them. A media watchdog has rubbished these claims.

The New Yorker reported that Hegeseth drunkenly shouted “Kill all Muslims!” in the middle of a bar while serving as the president of Concerned Veterans for America (CVA). The same article claimed that Hegseth was “completely passed out” in a van and “slumped over” a female employee and had to be carried back to his room. Jane Meyer, the author of the piece, was also behind smears against Justice Brett Kavanaugh

An undisclosed whistleblower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of CVA from 2013 until 2016, alleged misconduct during inebriation and that Hegseth sexually pursued female coworkers. The report also claims he was forced to resign from two different veterans groups because of alleged misconduct and mismanagement. An ex-CVA advisor revealed that Hegseth stepped down voluntarily and that there wasn't any fraud or misconduct.

It was also alleged that Hegseth sexually assaulted a woman at a California hotel in 2017.  Hegseth’s attorney Timothy Parlatore revealed that the allegation "was investigated by the police at the time and they found no evidence.”

The attacks aren't just restricted to Hegseth -- the WaPo belittled all Bronze Star awardees claiming that Bronze Stars are "fairly routine and bureaucratic.”

All of the above are claims made by unnamed sources.  

Even if someone claims to be a witness or a victim, it isn't proof of wrongdoing. 

Recently reports surfaced that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may replace Hegseth. This too was a falsehood -- President Trump has reaffirmed his faith in Hegseth.

But the news space is flooded with these allegations. The goal is to imply that there is no smoke without fire.

Now for some facts.

Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Mike Rounds (R-SD) support Hegseth, as do senator-elect James Banks and Rep. Warren Davidson.

But the smear merchants of the swamp won't relent. They tasted blood following the ouster of Matt Gaetz and are hoping to repeat their feat.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) claimed that the allegations against Hegseth are “very disturbing,” which is ironclad proof that the swamp despises Hegseth.

This is a preview of what Hegseth's hearing is likely to be. It will be a kangaroo court. Despite not being charged with any crime, Hegseth will treated as guilty. This isn't only a violation of the norms of any confirmation process but also due process in court which mandates the presumption of innocence. This is the treatment Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Clarence Thomas received.

There will be 'protests' during these confirmations both in the arena and beyond, and the 'protestors' will confront individual senators. They will create an atmosphere where it appears that a vote for Hegseth is a vote for rapists and scare GOP senators. 

The smear merchants also know that everyone has a threshold. If it isn't the nominee, it's family members. 

The other goal is to scare the nominee such that even after confirmation, he will hesitate to act.

The reason for this staunch opposition is that Hegseth stands against the swamp. Hegseth is a staunch critic of DEI initiatives in the armed forces. In a recent interview, he pledged to sack Joint Chiefs involved in woke initiatives. He believes that the function of the armed forces is to protect the nation. Amazingly, this is a controversial opinion in contemporary D.C.

If nominees were to capitulate before smears, only swamp loyalists would receive confirmation.

This also raises questions about the Senate confirmation phase itself. President Trump received a landslide mandate on November 5th, i.e. a license to drain the swamp. A prolonged Senate confirmation process will impede the implementation of this key campaign promise. 

The process seems counterproductive. Why should senators who receive mandates from half of their state be allowed to obstruct the choices of a President who received a national mandate? What about states that Trump won but have non-GOP senators? 

Trump won Arizona, which has a Democrat and an independent senator. If these two senators vote against confirmation, it would undermine Trump's Arizona mandate but the underminers will be those who also received Arizona mandates.  

What if the Senate was controlled by Democrats? They wouldn't have approved of any of Trump's choices and that would undermine his mandate.

Another reason confirmation may not be necessary is that cabinet secretaries aren't decision-makers, they are subordinates of the President whose function is to implement the President's vision for the nation. They follow orders. The only vetting needed is for a criminal record and conflict of interest.

In parliamentary democracies (UK, Canada, India, etc.), the head of state, the prime minister, appoints his cabinet without any confirmation.  

A Senate confirmation hearing is required for judicial appointments since those are lifetime appointments, and Supreme Court rulings have a lasting impact on the nation. 

The problem isn't the idea of a Senate confirmation, but that the process has drifted away from its original purpose. Senate confirmations should be the equivalent of a panel interview, i.e. an objective and meticulous probe by various individuals to judge the merit of any nominee.  Unfortunately, Senate confirmation and hearings have devolved into theatrics and partisan skullduggery. 

The exchange is set to a stopwatch, preventing deep probing questions, thorough answers, and follow-up questions. The confirmation process is rendered meaningless because Presidents find ways to circumvent it. When Susan Rice withdrew her Secretary of State nomination, Obama appointed her National Security Adviser, which does not require Senate confirmation.

Individuals who receive confirmation are often sub-par. Examples include Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, etc. 

The idea of Senate confirmations was conceived in an era when D.C. consisted of patriots who placed the nation's well-being first. 

Alas, those days are long gone.

It's time to rethink this process. Perhaps Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk's DOGE will lead this essential change, which will require a constitutional amendment.

In the meantime, is good to see President Trump remain steadfast in his support for Hegseth.

This insanity could be a crucial test of how the nominees act under pressure, do they capitulate or are defiant and ready to fight back?

Hegseth seems to have passed this test -- he doesn't seem shaken or hesitant but determined.

And we Know, and more- Dec 8

 

12.8.24: LT w/ Dr. Elliott: Trump threatens BRICS countries with 100% Tariff, China banks blocking Gold Purchases, PRAY!

0:00 / 0:00

15 seconds

15 seconds

0:00 / 0:00

15 seconds

15 seconds

0:00 / 0:00

15 seconds

15 seconds

0:00 / 0:00

15 seconds

15 seconds

0:00 / 0:00

15 seconds

15 seconds

0:00 / 0:00

15 seconds

15 seconds

The Fall of Assad and What Comes Next in Syria

 The dictator’s overthrow is “a pivotal event in the history of the modern Middle East.

IMO Well worth the read... RWV

” But could what follows be worse? I asked foreign correspondent Dexter Filkins.

This has been one of those weeks when decades happened.

In the space of about a week, Syrian rebels took over much of the north, and then moved south, taking over Homs and, last night, Damascus. Bashar al-Assad, the brutal dictator who ruled the country for the past 24 years, fled the country, and is thought to be in Russia. The rebel factions, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (an ex–al-Qaeda affiliate), celebrated the fall of Assad and released political dissidents from prison.

Many people are celebrating, understandably, the fall of a truly evil dictator. During his rule, Assad presided over the slaughter of nearly 3 percent of the country’s population—his own forces have killed, by some estimates, more than 600,000 civilians during the country’s civil war, which has displaced more than 13 million people since 2011. He and his regime have waged war against his own people, disappearing dissenters and persecuting religious minorities. And yet, is his departure all good news? Could those about to take power be worse? What are we to make of the rebel factions, who were formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda? And what are the implications of Russia and Iran’s retreat from Syria?

These are just some of the questions raised by the sudden collapse of the Assad regime. There’s no one better to answer them than The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins. Filkins has reported from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and pretty much everywhere else on the map. He is the author of The Forever War.

Fighters celebrate in Damascus on December 8, 2024, after Islamist-led rebels captured the Syrian capital. (Rami al-Sayed via Getty Images)

Adam Rubenstein: Could you describe the fall of Assad?

Dexter Filkins: The collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad has been breathtaking, decisive, and fast. First, the rebels took Aleppo, then Homs, now Damascus. On the ground, in many places, there is chaos: The Iranian and Russian advisers, and the fighters from Hezbollah, who rescued Assad’s regime in 2016, are fleeing. 

The Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries, imported by the Iranians to help, are trapped. The pivotal moment came Friday and Saturday, when the regime—one of the world’s most murderous—pulled back from the suburbs of Damascus. It seemed for a moment that Assad’s army was falling back for a last stand, but in fact, it was just disintegrating. Assad has fled the palace and reportedly, even Syria itself. The rebels and their commander, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, have taken the capital. No one could have predicted that events would move so fast.

AR: What’s the significance of Assad’s fall?

DF: The fall of Assad is a pivotal event in the history of the modern Middle East, for two reasons. First, even though we don’t know yet what the immediate future will bring, it’s a great moment for the Syrian people. The Assad imperium, which began with the ascension of Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, a former army officer, in 1971, lasted 53 years. (Bashar took over in 2000.) From the start, the Assads were brutal and corrupt and ruinous, tolerating no dissent; they immiserated the Syrian people. The second reason the fall of Assad is so important is that it represents the collapse of the long Iranian campaign to dominate the Middle East. Only 18 months ago, Iranian power was at its peak, with its local allies dominating a broad swath of the region and nearly completing the encirclement of Israel: Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza. 

The Iranians called it the “Axis of Resistance.” It was primarily aimed at Israel; the clear threat was that any Israeli attempt to attack Iran, particularly its nuclear weapons program, would be met by a rapid and devastating response by Iran’s allies. At the same time, the Axis of Resistance was a vast looting exercise; Assad, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon were parasites, sucking and draining the wealth from the countries they inhabited and crippling the states and governments where they lived. And now, after only a few months, the Iranian project lies in ruins. Hamas has been destroyed, Hezbollah is crippled, Assad is gone, and the Iranian regime itself is severely weakened.

It should be said: Most of the credit goes to Israel, which, by destroying Hamas, decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership, and leaving Iran’s leaders exposed, kicked away the support struts of Assad’s regime. The Ukrainian army deserves a nod, too. It was the Russian military that led the effort to save Assad when he was teetering in 2015; they bombed rebels and civilians indiscriminately. And now, eight years later, the Russians are tied down and bloodied in Ukraine, where they have sustained some 600,000 casualties. The Ukrainians, too, played an important role in Assad’s demise.

A vandalized statue of Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar al-Assad, on December 8, 2024, in Damascus, Syria. (Ali Haj Suleiman via Getty Images)

AR: What do we know about those likely to govern Syria?

DF: The leader of the revolt goes by the nom de guerre Mohammad al-Jolani, a Syrian. He’s smart, young, and ambitious. The “Jolani” in his name is derived from the Golan Heights, from which his family was forced to retreat in 1967, when Israel captured the region in the Six-Day War. 

Jolani began his career as a cold-eyed zealot, traveling to Iraq in 2003, where he was captured and put in an American prison when he was just out of his teens. The detention facility, Camp Bucca, was a notorious incubator of jihadis; if you weren’t a radical when you entered, you were by the time you left. Jolani was freed in 2008 and promptly joined al-Qaeda in Iraq, the supremely murderous gang that led the insurgency against the Americans in Iraq. 

When the Syrian uprising began in 2011, Jolani returned home, where he founded an al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, which became one of the principal groups fighting in Syria’s long, brutal, and multipronged civil war. At its founding, the al-Nusra Front, as it was known, acted like every other al-Qaeda affiliate: It was bloodthirsty and sectarian. 

The U.S. put a $10 million bounty on his head, and it’s still there. But after years of sectarian fighting, Jolani broke with al-Qaeda and formed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, based in the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib. As the leader of HTS, Jolani, at least on the surface, changed; as he marched across Syria, he ordered his remarkably well-disciplined troops to leave the Christian and Shi’ite minorities alone—the very groups al-Qaeda spent so many years killing. Jolani also told non-Syrian jihadis to stay away, indicating that he’s more a Syrian nationalist than an Islamic fanatic. 

Is Jolani’s transformation real or merely tactical? Nobody knows. But it’s interesting that in all the years that the U.S. has had a bounty on Jolani, they haven’t tried to kill him. Maybe American intelligence officials think he’s for real.

AR: Is there risk of a broader collapse in the region, a new Arab Spring?

DF: I don’t see much chance that the Arab Spring will come again. The Arab Spring was a series of internal revolts against decrepit regimes; the Syrian revolt was, too. But I think the events of the past six months are much better understood as a throwing-off of foreign—Iranian—domination. Of that, Syria finally appears free.

AR: Where is Assad right now? X was lighting up over a rumor that a Syrian government plane fell precipitously, and its radar stopped transmitting data. Anything to that?

DF: I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on X searching for Assad. If he’s alive, he’ll show himself. I’d guess Moscow.

NOTE: Reports say Assad is in Moscow now

AR: Israel has just taken critical territory on the top of Mount Hermon; there’s an image circulating of IDF soldiers holding an Israeli flag on the Syrian side of the Hermon. Our Matti Friedman said this is “probably the most dramatic development on the Israel-Syria border in 50 years.”

DF: I think the more significant development was Israel’s announcement that it had struck Syria’s chemical weapons factories. Everyone should be terrified at the prospect of those falling into the wrong hands.

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of Syria’s Islamist rebel offensive, addresses supporters on December 8, 2024, after snatching Damascus from Assad’s control. (Aref Tammawi via Getty Images)

AR: What are the next moves, and countermoves? A vacuum in eastern Syria? Turkey pummeling the Kurds in the north?

DF: There’s a good chance of Syria falling into chaos. It’s an artificial country, created by a few ill-considered pen strokes after the First World War. It contains multitudes of sects and tribes, which will now have to figure out how to live together, and they will have no institutions, like a free press or civil society, to help them, as they were long ago destroyed by the Assads. And then there are Syria’s neighbors—Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—competing for dominance. I will hope for the best and fear the worst.

AR: What are the Iranians thinking right now? Is it “Are we next?”

DF: Assad’s fall is a body blow to the Iranian regime. They have been exposed by the Israelis (and Americans) as being far more vulnerable than anyone knew. And the loss of Assad, Hezbollah, and Hamas reveals them to be cowardly and impotent. [Ayatollah] Ali Khamenei’s life work—the Axis of Resistance—is in ashes. He’s 85. He, and everyone around him, must be worried indeed.

https://www.thefp.com/p/dexter-filkins-on-the-fall-of-assad-syria-israel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_id=152810645&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=rd3ao&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Let Democrats Have Their Blanket Pardons, It’ll Screw Them In The End

posted by Derek Hunter at Townhall 

The old saying that if it were not for double standards, liberals wouldn’t have any standards at all dates back decades, at least to the 1960s. While it has evolved to be more succinct, it is not accurate anymore – Democrats do not have double standards; they no longer have any standards for themselves. 

If there is a limit to what a Democrat can do before their own side criticizes them, it remains a mystery to the ages. Ok, if they lose an election, they can be criticized, at least when claiming it was stolen won’t fly. 

Otherwise, nothing is beyond the pale for the left. The CEO of a health insurance company gets assassinated on the streets of New York City, and the left’s first response is he deserved it because some people have been denied care. Were they, and were they denied to his company? I have no idea, but neither does anyone celebrating this man’s murder. They just know health insurance is expensive, and sometimes people are denied coverage – they’ve seen movies about it – so anyone associated with it has to be evil. It’s OK to do evil to someone who does evil themselves, the “logic” goes.

Democrats are terrified, if you believe them, over the prospect of the incoming Trump administration treating them like, well, they treated people in the first Trump administration. Terrified is the wrong word – they’re not really terrified, they simply do not want it. The “Golden Rule” is more subtle regarding the left.

What worries them is the power of government being turned on them the way New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on investigating then President Donald Trump to see if he’d done anything wrong. Democrats cheered this because they hate Trump. They cheered laws literally being changed and created to go after him. Who would want to live with that hanging over them?

But Democrats are not arguing (now) that what they did to Trump was wrong (though Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is admitting it was political); they’re arguing that to do to them what they did to Trump would be wrong without acknowledging what they did to Trump at all.

It would be one thing if they admitted they’d corrupted government power, but they do not. They act as though history began on Election Day, with nothing before then. 

With that mentality, the White House is allegedly discussing pardoning nearly everyone involved in the Biden administration for anything they MAY HAVE DONE that COULD BE ILLEGAL before Trump resumes office on January 20th.

That’s one hell of a bit of power to exercise – the preemptive pardon. What might someone do if they thought there was absolution awaiting them, no matter what? Not many would do it, but surely some would misappropriate funds or valuable equipment because why not?

Remember the discussion at the end of the Trump administration where leftists were speculating that Trump might pardon himself for reasons they couldn’t and didn’t even try to articulate? He didn’t, of course. But Joe might. 

What is it they think they’d be protecting themselves from? If they did it, not being able to be prosecuted wouldn’t absolve them from having to answer questions before Congress. Removing the ability to plead the 5th – if you can’t be prosecuted, there is no threat of self-incrimination – would require them to answer all questions or face contempt of Congress charges, which would be new and not covered by a blanket pardon. 

By being required to answer all questions, these people would have to choose between answering questions thoroughly and honestly or shading the truth and lying to prevent the public from learning the things they hoped to hide. While they wouldn’t face prison for any actual crimes they would have committed, the public humiliation of their corruption and/or incompetence would likely cause at least some of them to commit perjury, which would be new and, therefore, not covered by these insane pardons.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of these preemptive pardons. It’s like conspiring to set a perjury trap with the person you hope to catch – who could ask for more?

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

People Who Fought In Afghanistan Know Why Nation-Building Was Never Going To Work

In Afghanistan, tribalism is at a virtually unparalleled level. Westerners have no idea how deeply disturbing that tribalism can be.

posted by Jesse Petrilla at The Federalist

The following is an excerpt from If It Takes a Thousand Years: From Al-Qaeda to Hamas, How the Jihadists Think & How to Defeat Them.

I entered the cell of the Taliban commander. He had just been captured from the battlefield. I was aghast at the sight of him. Half his face was missing, his skull partially blown away in some battle. His wounds appeared to be old, so I asked him when this happened. “Fighting the Russians,” he said through the translator. Yet there he was, 23 years after the Afghan-Soviet War ended, still fighting the jihad against the infidels.

Most of the Taliban could not read or write, and couldn’t even sign their own name, but in lieu of his signature, I needed his thumbprint on a document for the interrogation, or “interview” as we called it. I reached down to take his hand and press it on the ink pad, only to find out he had no thumb. What would drive someone in such shape to keep fighting us? This is the question I had spent the previous decade searching out answers for leading up to that moment in Afghanistan.

I was serving in the U.S. Army as a Liaison Officer to the Afghan secret police, and facilitated the interrogations of over 400 captured Taliban and Al-Qa’eda members while there. A Taliban leader once told me “You have me in a cage, my fight is over for now, but my children will fight you, and if they don’t win, their children will fight you. If It Takes a Thousand Years, we will win.” Although it didn’t take the Taliban a thousand years to win the battle of Afghanistan, it demonstrates the drive that our jihadist enemies have. They fight generational wars against the West as a whole.

When analyzing our Islamic extremist enemies, it is important for the American people to understand the tribal mindset that so many of our enemies come from. Islam developed from tribal cultures, and many tribal cultures over the past 1,400 years developed under Islam. The Islamic world itself is divided into what I would describe as tribes; you have the Sunni tribe, the Shia tribe, and within that are thousands of other tribes, one of the most recent being the “Palestinian” tribe which has become somewhat of a self-appointed identity by various lost members of other tribes. But in Afghanistan, tribalism is at a level that is virtually unparalleled in the world.

It is human nature to coalesce together into groups, but when you add Islam to the mix, it fuels different dynamics that are completely alien to Westerners. The tribal mindset is so vastly different than our own that it often makes it impossible to reason with them, and they will not respond logically or rationally as you might assume an American or other Westerner would. To Westerners, the tribal mindset may contain many elements that are quite shocking and deeply disturbing.

Part of our training upon arrival in Afghanistan included multiple briefings on Islamic and Afghan culture, since we would be working with locals on a daily basis. In one such briefing, the Afghan-American man leading the discussion began by stating; “You must understand that everything about your way of life in America, is completely different in this planet.” He quickly corrected himself to say “in this country,” but his misspeaking was not too far from the truth. From the way people say hello to the way they go to the bathroom, everything is different, and it is like another world to a Westerner.

In Pashtun tribal law, the largest tribe in Afghanistan comprising almost half the nation, there is something known as khun, or blood money. It can be paid to make amends for various transgressions such as murder, property damage, theft, kidnapping, etcetera. In addition to khun, women can be given to become sex slaves as well as female babies to eventually turn into sex slaves. Women and female babies count as two-thirds of the khun.

Just as in every other part of the Islamic world, Pashtun women have far less status than men. To divorce a woman, the man only needs to declare “I divorce thee” three times publicly. Many Pashtuns also believe that women have something called the “evil eye,” that they have special powers and the ability to cause bad things to happen.

In Pashtun tribal law, if a woman is kidnapped by force, and coerced to consent to marry her kidnapper, but she does not get her father’s permission, the father has the right to kill her. Any inclination of a woman having dishonored the family is rapidly met by her murder. In one of the detainee interrogations, I was truly shocked and saddened when the detainee was describing his family, and nonchalantly said “I have eight children, I had nine but one of my daughters dishonored the family and so I killed her,” a story I unfortunately would hear similar versions of on more than one occasion from multiple detainees.

At one point during my tour, there was a recently captured Taliban detainee who had just been interrogated. The interrogator was laughing and told me while he was taking notes during questioning, the detainee stopped him and asked through the translator what that stick was he was holding. He had never seen a pen before in his life. These are the people we were trying to teach the Western democratic republican style of governance.

To almost everyone who spent time in Afghanistan, aside from an idealistic few, it was little surprise when the Taliban so rapidly overtook the Afghan government in 2021, in what would be such an unnecessarily chaotic withdrawal of American forces.

I recall one instance where we were ordered to turn over a shipping container of captured Taliban weapons to the Afghan government, and I told the Major in charge of the mission “You know these are going right back to the Taliban as soon as we leave, right?” Without hesitation, he responded, “Oh yes, I know.” I unsuccessfully lobbied the Colonel in charge of our unit to send the container to Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and have the entire thing destroyed, but he was adamant that they be given to the Afghans, and now every one of those weapons belongs once again to the Taliban.

Most people there got it. But back in Washington, and among so many in the higher ranks in the military trying to please those in Washington, there was a complete disconnect from the reality on the ground, and a complete misunderstanding of just who our enemy is, how they think, and how ferociously determined they are.

The Sentiment Inside the Newly Taken Syria Includes an Element of Surprise

 ‘No one expected the regime to collapse so quickly,’ the Sun is told by a young media activist at Aleppo.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a United States-designated political organization that was formerly linked to al-Qaeda, in the past week stunned the world — and Syrians themselves — by seizing strategic areas of the country’s historic business hub of Aleppo and central Hama, before moving on to the gates of Damascus early Sunday, prompting Syrian tyrant Bashar Al-Assad to flee to an unknown destination and bringing an end to the family’s 50-year rule.

What is the reaction inside?

“I am rejoicing. Everyone is happy. We are full of tears,” one 30-something professional, Malak, who resides in Damascus tells The New York Sun via encrypted messenger early Sunday. “We are free. It is a day for history.”

Malak points to the persistent fear of living under a dictatorship responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Syrians.

Another young professional in the port city and Alawite stronghold of Latakia also conveyed jubilation to the Sun on messenger at the news. 

“It is done. No more Assad,” Ayman Abdel Nour, a Christian Syrian reformist and defected Assad government adviser, tells the Sun. “Some are happy. Some worry.”

He predicts that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham will ask current government employees to stay in their positions and in around one month, United Nations Special Envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, will come to Damascus to help oversee a transitional governance. 

“They will invite everybody to the negotiation table, and they will form a new Syria with a new future,” Mr. Nour continued. “How it will be done, I think, will be a country broken into five or six states. Each has its own municipality regulation, rather than a central governance.”

Another source based in Idlib tells the Sun on messenger that the prisons were opened early Sunday following the collapse, and that he was able to connect with a friend jailed in Damascus since 2009. 

“There are celebrations across the country. No more airstrikes, no more displaced, no more bullying on the people who were opposed to the regime,” he said. 

A source in the Kurdish areas of the country expressed relief to the Sun on a call that Mr. Assad had left and that the war may finally be over, but emphasized the future of the country, and its control, is “unknown.”

“As Kurdish we have now only the issue of forces supported by Turkish attacking our areas, the source said, referring to the regions controlled by the United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. 

Many Syrians are indeed still trying to wrap their heads around the dizzying speed at which the tables turned this week. 

“Everyone is still in shock over the complete liberation of Aleppo city, especially since it happened within just one day,” Mustafa Hafez, a 32-year-old media activist based in Aleppo, also tells the Sun via encrypted messenger. “Although everyone was aware of the fragile state of the Syrian government’s forces, no one expected the regime to collapse so quickly. The liberation of Aleppo from the Syrian regime brought us immense joy. I was considering leaving Syria, but now, with Aleppo freed, I no longer have a reason to leave.”

Mr. Hafez is one of several people inside Hayat Tahrir al-Sham areas in Syria who connected with the Sun in the days after the armed opposition group seized strategic swaths of the country from forces loyal to Mr. Assad. Most depicted support for the governance change and claimed they have been treated well and can move freely but spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears over retaliation or the safety of relatives in other parts of the country. 

Aleppo, seized by rebels early in the Syrian civil war, was reclaimed by Syrian government forces with Russian support in 2016 after a devastating siege. While the city has for the most part since then  avoided warfare and even though the Assad dictatorship routinely touts its reconstruction efforts, human rights groups and outside observers point to ongoing human rights abuses, including torture, civilian killings, and a lack of democratic freedoms.

Air strikes by the now crumbled Syrian government and its allied Russian forces have killed hundreds in recent days and sent thousands fleeing, igniting concerns that intense fighting from a decade ago could re-ignite. 

“We are happy, but we do not want to leave our house,” a mother of four in Aleppo tells the Sun. “Even our houses are not safe. And it could get much worse.”

Bill Roggio, senior fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells the Sun that the offensive didn’t come out of nowhere. He reckons that the anti- Al-Assad group “has spent the last several years professionalizing its forces and accumulating weapons and ammunition to prepare for its offensive.”

“The Syrian Arab Army appears to have become complacent after years of minimal fighting and was not prepared for the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham offensive,” he explained. “Assad will likely need the support of Russia, Iran, and the Iranian-backed Iraq militias to stem the tide.”

But that came all but too late. 

How it Happened 

Mr. Hafez tells the Sun that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has “medium and heavy arms” and even sent in its Shahin Unit, which specializes in the use of “combat drones, which shifted the balance in favor of the (HTS) factions,” but analysts and those on the ground note that the takeovers happened swiftly with little exchange of fire. 

“There were no clashes or direct war or bumping between the two. The Syrian regime forces don’t have any motivation, all are the people who have obligatory military service, which means they don’t have any training. They don’t ammunition. They don’t have any food. All the food for them is stolen by their officers and sold for their own pocket or by Assad nonprofit organizations,” Mr. Nour said. “The groups that entered were highly trained, highly equipped. They have drones. They have good preparation.”

Mr. Nour claimed that the withdrawing Syrian army left a number of tanks that are now in militant hands and that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was focused solely on Aleppo. Moving on to Hama, and then Damascus, was merely taking advantage of the opportunity after their triumph. 

The Rebel Group Behind the Takeover

Who exactly is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham? The group was formed in 2011 as Jabhat al-Nusra, an affiliate of al-Qaeda. In 2017, it publicly distanced itself from the group, claiming to have moderated its ideology. However, human rights organizations accuse Hayat Tahrir al-Sham of detaining and mistreating journalists and civilians who oppose them, allegations that the group denies. Since the Aleppo takeover, the group has pledged to protect Syrians of all sects. 

Minorities in Syria, including Christians — who have long suffered under the thumb of jihadist outfits — were initially apprehensive of the insurgency — but the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has repeatedly vowed in statements to assure the protection of all citizens, irrespective of sect or affiliation. 

So far in these areas, Mr. Nour says, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham “have not forced Christian women to wear hijabs, and they have not destroyed Christmas ornaments or looted or destroyed any building.” Mr. Nour said. “They have a clear message – to protect all,” he says.

Others warn that such proclamations may not hold. 

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is “ideologically extreme. They tactically distanced themselves from al-Qaeda during the counter-ISIS coalition’s peak to avoid being targeted,” the senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, Hans-Jakob Schindler, tells The New York Sun. “But make no mistake — they’re not trustworthy.”

From Mr. Schindler’s point of view, it boils down to a choice between the devil one does or doesn’t know. 

“Assad is horrific, but he’s a dictator focused on his country,” Mr. Schindler says. He contrasts that with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which while claiming to be focused on Syria, still has “tolerance for extremist groups within their territory, and that makes them a long-term risk.” He notes that the United States and the West have significantly reduced their presence and have little influence in the region. “The real players now are Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Assad, none of whom are ideal partners.”

With Mr. Assad no longer on the ground, it is unclear how Iran and Russia will respond. 

Bill Roggio asserted that “it is never a good idea to give terrorists a safe haven to operate from.”

 “There are major concerns that Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles can fall into the hands of jihadist groups,” he said. “There are no good actors in this war.”

Mr. Roggio also pointed out that there are “major concerns that Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles can fall into the hands of jihadist groups.” 

Mr. Hafez surmised that he, and most other civilians in the city, view the expulsion of Mr. Assad troops as a “revolution, not a civil war” and while he understands the international community’s “fears about what might happen if Hayat Tahrir al-Sham gains control over Syria,” he believes “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has learned from past lessons and has changed its policies, as we see on the ground, especially in how it deals with civilians and other sects.”

Ronnie Hamada, a conflict analyst and risk management who fled his hometown of Aleppo at the height of the war, tells the Sun via messenger that everyone left there is “exhausted” and underscored that “this is a population that had the misfortune of staying.”

“Everyone who could leave has already left the country, and those who stayed are in shambles,” he pointed out. “Of course, there are those who are super happy about the ‘liberation’ of Aleppo and Hama and are now able to return to their homes after years in camps, but I also understand the concern of those who are worried about what’s coming.”

He said early Saturday many were predicting the regime to fall within a matter of days as there seemed to be little pushback by Syrian forces. 

Over the past few days, the embattled regime rushed to deploy reinforcements to the lost territories and offered dramatic salary increases for those willing to fight. At the same time, its Moscow allies have carried out a series of punishing airstrikes on critical infrastructure, schools, and health facilities in and around Idlib, the long-standing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and opposition stronghold where the surprise offensive is believed to have originated. But it seems it wasn’t enough. 

The Geopolitical Quagmire 

The timing of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s rise to power is also critical and highlights the complexity of the regional geopolitics at play. 

“Hezbollah was by far the main contributor to bringing the city back to Assad’s control back in late 2016. Since then, Hezbollah has had a significant presence in the city and its surroundings; it asserted de facto control over the city,” Mr. Hamada explains. “Israel’s killing of the first two command rows of Hezbollah over the past few months, coupled with the Israel Defense Force’s invasion into Lebanese territory, has led to Hezbollah troop redeployments from Aleppo and its countryside to Southern Lebanon.”

Retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Special Forces, Jason Amerine, tells the Sun that Mr. Assad’s downfall was, in one word, “Ukraine.”

“This is why you destroy Russia in Ukraine,” he said. “Ukraine did this. Israel to a lesser degree.”

Ankara insisted opposition forces be included in normalization talks, Mr. Assad, however, demanded the withdrawal of Turkish forces from northern Syria as a condition for normalization. Damascus labels the insurgents as terrorists and long vowed a harsh response, neighboring Arab countries, once opposed to Mr. Assad, in recent months had grown to back him due to regional concerns.

Iran, meanwhile, spent the last week urgently scrambling to mobilize regional forces to support Mr. Assad, dispatching fighters from the largely weakened Hezbollah and Iraq’s Shiite militias to Syria. 

“The untapped potential is the Iraqi militias, which have fought in Syria in the past,” Mr. Roggio said. “I expect Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps personnel to pair up with the Iraqi militias to bolster the failing Syrian military.”

However, a former Speaker of the Iraqi parliament and founder of the prominent Sunni Progress Party, Mohamed al-Halbousi, told the Sun on a visit to Washington D.C. on Friday that Baghdad does not support any form of interference in Syria, acknowledging that while the government cannot control the Shiite militia groups it can “control its border” and prohibit fighters from crossing into the neighboring country. 

For Washington and Israel, “whom to support” is equally problematic, as a victory for either side poses risks. President Al-Assad’s alliance with Iran, Israel’s enemy, could strengthen if he prevails, undermining Israel’s efforts to weaken Iran’s influence in the region. On the other hand, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is a designated terrorist organization that Israel sees as a threat. 

Some 900 United States troops stationed in Syria to support the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces battling the Islamic State remnants now face the unknown. On Tuesday, United States forces in Syria conducted a “self-defensive” strike after multiple rocket launchers targeted the their vicinity. 

Syria’s Future 

The escalation in fighting and the swift collapse of regime forces in key areas calls into question what this all means for Syria’s leadership.

“Replacing (Assad) isn’t straightforward; it’s a deeply entrenched system,” surmised Mr. Schindler. 

Mr. al-Halbousi stressed that Iraq “absolutely does not want radical neighbors” but recognizes that turmoil will only continue without legitimate elections. 

“The Syrian people must have real representation, including everyone in Syria, through a democratic process,” he continued. “On the other hand, if groups like Jabhat al-Nusra or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham take full control of Syria, that won’t lead to stability either.”

For many, having a terrorist group in the Palace is far from ideal— but still better than the deeply-entrenched tyrant. 

One political operative explained that he had to flee Aleppo for Turkey six months ago to escape persecution by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham who “targeted him” for his affiliation with the Syrian Interim Government, a body aligned with opposition groups resisting the group’s rule. 

“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is not good,” the operative, who asked not to be identified by name, wrote to the Sun via encrypted messenger. “But no one is worse than the Assad regime.”

https://www.nysun.com/article/the-sentiment-inside-the-newly-taken-syria-includes-an-element-of-surprise

HOLLIE McKAY

Ms. McKay is a war and humanitarian-focused international correspondent and author of 'Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield,' 'Afghanistan: The End of the US Footprint and Rise of the Taliban Rule,' and 'The Dictator's Wife.'