The tragic events in Syria over the weekend should, but will likely not, prompt reflection and rethinking on the part of many within the Washington establishment who were at the forefront of calling for the overthrow of the secular leader of multi-confessional Syria, Bashar al-Assad, beginning in 2011 when his government was the object of a coup attempt by Islamist jihadists. What was unfolding there thirteen years ago was no secret – at the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s adviser Jake Sullivan noted in an email that “AQ is on our side in Syria” – AQ being Al Qaeda. Yet this did not dissuade an alliance of crusading “progressive” foreign policy thinkers and neoconservatives from wholehearted embracing Hillary Clinton’s war cry that “Assad must go.” The question they never had a satisfactory answer for was “and then what?”
We arrived over the weekend at the “and then what?” part of the story. It appears by all accounts that the Islamist group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which has roots in the al Nusra front, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda, has now, and with fearful alacrity, taken control of Syria. And so what has happened is exactly what a number of us, perhaps most prominently Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, have spent years warning about: an Islamist caliphate on the Mediterranean.
What to expect now? The Christian population of Syria which was heretofore free to worship should expect to be fed to a slaughter, as advertised.
What do I mean ‘as advertised’?
Eyewitnesses to the earliest protests knew that this was no peaceful pro-democracy movement. Recall the observations of Father Frans van der Lugt, a Dutch missionary to Syria who was murdered by so-called “rebel” forces in 2014:
…From the start, the protest movements were not purely peaceful. From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels.”
The murdered Dutch priest also observed, “The opposition of the street is much stronger than any other opposition. And this opposition is armed and frequently employs brutality and violence, only in order to then blame the government.”
The promise made by Saudi- and Turkish- backed terrorists in the early days of the anti-Assad uprising, that they would drive “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave” is now likely to come to fruition.
Given this, opponents of Gabbard’s nomination to serve as DNI might take a deep breath and consider what is happening in Syria at this very moment before they unleash another round of unfounded, uninformed – and in the cases of Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz – hysterical attacks on her character.
Part of the reason for the attacks has of course to do with her heterodox view of US-Russia policy (a view I share), which in some ways tracks with Trump’s. The other reason for the opprobrium aimed in her direction has been her steadfast opposition to an Islamist takeover of Syria.
As has been widely reported, Gabbard met Assad in January 2017. Gabbard was hardly the first American politician to meet with the Syrian leader. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with him against the objections of the Bush White House in 2007.
Why did Gabbard meet with Assad? Likely because our policy toward the region was deeply immoral and strategically counterproductive. And we know this because the man serving as Washington’s chief diplomat at the time of Gabbard’s meeting was caught on tape admitting as much. Here is a transcript of then Secretary of State John Kerry in September 2016 admitting the US led ISIL run wild in the hope that it would topple Assad:
…And we know that this [ISIL/Daesh] was growing, we were watching, we saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened…We thought, however, we could probably imagine that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.…The reason Russia came in is because ISIL was getting stronger. Daesh was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus at some point and that’s why Russia came in. Because they didn’t want a Daesh government and they supported Assad. “
They, the Russians, didn’t want a Syrian government controlled by ISIL/ISIS.
The question remains: Why did we?
What Gabbard knew then and so few else did or claimed not to (the argument over the nature of the Islamist beast attacking Syria was particularly venomous among publications on the left, as I remember all too well from my time at The Nation) was that Assad – dictator that he might have been – had been the target of a decade long coup attempt perpetuated by some of the most violent religious fanatics in the Middle East.
One hardly expects someone like Wasserman-Schultz, who would flatline an electroencephalogram, to understand the difference between an Alawite ophthalmologist and a Salafi-jihadist. But for the US Senators now tasked with considering Gabbard’s confirmation, there is no excuse.
James W. Carden is a columnist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs.
