It wasn’t that long ago that the United States fled evacuated Afghanistan, leaving it to the Taliban, and the Taliban promised that they’d be, if not all sweetness and light, more tolerant than they had been during their previous reign. I do not know whether then-President Donald Trump actually believed the Taliban’s claims as he negotiated the withdrawal, or was simply looking for a fig leaf of cover for the withdrawal — which wasn’t completed until President Joe Biden too office — as President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did during the peace talks in Paris, but the Taliban have been not-so-slowly returning to the restrictions on the public, especially on women, that they had imposed previously.

Syrian rebel leader’s victory speech holds a message for Iran – and for Trump and Israel too

by Nic Robertson | Sunday, December 8, 2024 | 11:17 PM EST

CNN — Abu Mohammad al-Jolani’s^[1]Real name: Ahmed Al Sharaa. road to Damascus has been long. He has talked openly about his change along the way. From young al Qaeda fighter two decades ago, to rebel commander espousing sectarian tolerance.

It’s a journey along which he has had plenty of time to plan where and how he would mark his arrival, and to fine-tune his narrative – his message for those who put him in power, those who might bring him down, and others who can keep him in power.

It is no surprise that the Islamist rebel chose Damascus’s venerated Umayyad Mosque – not a TV studio, nor newly absented presidential palace, but a place of towering religious significance, which at 1,300 years old is one of the world’s most ancient mosques – to deliver that message.

Some typical boilerplate deleted. Here’s where al-Jolani’s message stops being boilerplate:

In a country where the God you chose, and how you pray, can define your class, limit your aspirations and pit you against your neighbor, Jolani sent a very clear signal in the Umayyad Mosque. He is a Sunni Muslim, part of Syria’s majority. Assad was an Alawite. There are Christians, Druze, Shia Muslims, Ismailis and more.

Yet the words he chose appeared intended to break those old bounds. “This new triumph, my brothers, marks a new chapter in the history of the region, a history fraught with dangers (that left) Syria as a playground for Iranian ambitions, spreading sectarianism, stirring corruption,” he said.

Singling Iran out appears to be a message to Tehran’s theocracy – that their meddling is over, their easy land access to their mega proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon is over, their support for Syrian Hezbollah is over, and gone too is the home they once had for Iran’s weapons stockpiles.

Will Mr al-Jolani allow religious pluralism in Syria? His words seem to indicate yes, but his history says no. You can see, in the linked article to the left, how CNN has the silliness of an article entitled “How Syria’s rebel leader went from radical jihadist to a blazer-wearing ‘revolutionary’,” telling their readers how Mr al-Jolani wants to appear to the civilized West. He orchestrated a split from al Qaeda:

to create what he said was a Syria-focused anti-regime front with other local factions, called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (the Front for the Conquest of the Levant), which later changed to Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), or the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant.

“This new formation has no relation to any external party,” he said at the time, distancing it from his radical Islamist past.

Yeah, uh huh, right. I will believe it when I see it.

Back to the original cited article:

But it is a message Jolani will know is being heard in Tel Aviv and Washington, where he is considered to be a member of a proscribed terrorist organisation with a $10 million dollar bounty on his head. A message that says to them, ‘your interests are understood in the new Syria,’ and an understanding on his part that these are the powers capable of bringing him down.

Jolani has been at pains on his race to Damascus to make sure US President Joe Biden and even President-elect Donald Trump know his intent. It is no coincidence that he picked a US TV network, CNN, and not an Arab one, for a key interview in the days before he ousted Assad, claiming he had parted company from other jihadists because of their brutal tactics.

Over a century of Western liberals swallowing the Western-attuned claims of dictators, from the works of Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Josef Stalin, which seduced so many with the soothing words of Marxism to hide a brutal dictatorship, including New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, to those of Mao Zedong, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega, placating American liberals, ought to educate us that, to dictators, and to non-Westerners, half-truths and outright lies are simply part and parcel of their ‘revolutions,’ and that they expect the liberal West to swallow them whole.

Senator and now Vice President-elect J D Vance isn’t buying it, tweeting:

As President Trump said, this is not our fight and we should stay out of it.

Aside from that, opinions like the below make me nervous. The last time this guy was celebrating events in Syria we saw the mass slaughter of Christians and a refugee crisis that destabilized Europe.

Josh Rogin is a columnist for The Washington Post, which automatically puts his words in the ‘questionable’ category. Mr Rogin said that the Syrian “people liberated themselves from tyranny. Freedom won.” Of course, he also said:

Ukraine is going to win, too. Let’s hope it doesn’t take 14 years like it did for the Syrians. If we had helped the Syrians more, this would have happened sooner. Let’s not make that same mistake with Ukraine now. Dictatorships are brittle. People refuse to live on their knees.

Translation: let’s waste even more money on Ukraine!

Well, the American people rejected that, in the only opinion poll that counts, on November 5, 2024.

Mr Rogin said, in effect, that the United States should have supported the Syrian rebels, who sprung from an Islamist base! more. What kind of idiocy is that?

Who knows? Perhaps Mr al-Jolani and his minions will live up to the soothing words the rebel leader used on CNN. But Westerners have been bamboozled by words aimed at us before, and I wouldn’t believe a word Mr al-Jolani says before he matches them with deeds.