The collapse of the Assad Regime explained

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government has officially collapsed, sending an already unstable Middle East into a tailspin… and online conspiracy theorists into unhinged hysteria. In only ten days, rebel groups toppled the Assad family’s 50-year grip on Syria, inflicting crushing blows to the tyrant’s Iranian and Russian allies. Even as Assad fled to Moscow on Sunday, however, American “truthers” took to social media to downplay the man’s evil regime. 

“I have been a longstanding supporter of Bashar Assad in the face of the attacks by the imperialists,” said tendentious contrarian and popular “X” influencer Jackson Hinkle, suggesting that Assad was “a brother in arms of mine.” He praised the brutal dictator for “defending his people, his country’s sovereignty against all the terrorist threats that have plagued Syria from Israel… from the United States.”

“Russia and Syria have stood strong in the face of it all,” added Hinkle, who openly supports Russian President Vladamir Putin.

Let’s be very clear: while we should not support the radical rebel forces behind Assad’s fall, including, most prominently, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a militia group formerly linked to al-Qaida, that does not diminish the horrors of Assad’s rule.

We should be very concerned about Syria’s future under HTS, even as Christians in the region worry about possible persecution under the Sunni political organization. Since 2016, when HTS parted ways with al-Qaida and reportedly renounced its extremist roots, the group’s leaders, including Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who led the campaign against the Assad regime, have sought to reconnect with Christians and espouse pluralism and tolerance. A Christian in Aleppo, a major city that recently fell to al-Golani’s forces, told The Washington Post that, so far, “the rebels have upheld their promises to respect people of all faiths.” However, the Post reports, “he worries that ‘maybe it’s a psychological game to win people over’ and that ‘once they have a better grip, something will change.’”

World leaders agree that the HTS’ goodwill tour with Christians is misleading. Indeed, the U.S. government currently offers a $10 million bounty on al-Golani’s head. One of the groups under his control (Nour al-din al-Zenk) reportedly beheaded children. Clearly, they are not friendly to us or our interests in the region.

Indeed, Israel has conducted nearly 500 strikes across Syria since Sunday to prevent military weaponry from falling into the hands of the insurgent terrorist groups.

However, that does not mean that we should praise or make excuses for Assad’s appalling crimes. Figures like Mr. Hinkle, who minimize the tyrant’s bloody reign of terror, are either dangerously foolish or willfully adjacent to evil.

Assad’s regime was supported by Iran, the most infamous international state sponsor of terrorism, an oppressive nation whose leaders openly chant “Death to America.” Assad’s government was considered a part of the Islamic Republic’s “Axis of Resistance,” a network of terror, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and the Houthis. The unraveling of the Axis of Resistance is, no doubt, a positive development for the U.S. and anyone who opposes radical jihad.

In addition to supporting Iran’s aim to topple Israel and America, Assad sponsored a “human slaughterhouse,” the Saydnaya military prison, where political prisoners and civilians were subjected to “rampant torture,” “severe beatings, rape,” and “mass murders.”

Since Sunday, tens of thousands of captives have already been freed from the prison, with family members and friends turning out to find loved ones who have been missing for years.

Witnesses to Assad’s crimes have described the dreadful extent of his terrifying system of control. Extensive eye-witness testimonies (available here) detail the ‘psychological torture’ and other forms of abuse endured by Saydnaya detainees. One young woman, for example, said guards threatened “to check whether or not she was a virgin, and to hang her naked in a hall full of men.” She was later asked to marry her interrogator. 

Such barbaric coercion is far from unusual for Assad, who used chemical weapons against his people in 2018, reportedly to suppress political unrest. Former President Donald Trump ordered tomahawk missile strikes against Syria in response to the horrific crime.

“Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians,” Trump said. “Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”

Similarly, in 2013, the now-disposed president “launched rockets carrying the deadly nerve agent sarin into the Ghouta district of Damascus [the capital], killing more than 1,400 people,” according to the U.S. State Department.

This is the man so-called “pro-America” social media personalities are defending. Don’t be fooled by their lack of moral clarity. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s disturbing record by no means clears Assad of his demonic violence.

Americans’ capacity to think critically about foreign affairs has been dangerously impaired by the immediate rush to conspiratorial conjecture. Virtually anytime the media, the military, or someone in Washington calls out a grave military threat to the U.S. or her allies, obscure social media accounts sound the alarm that the mysterious cabal of power is “plotting” for war. In this case, they assumed that by calling out Assad for his heinous human rights violations, the illusive “imperialists” sought to lure us into an international war. In reality, though, Bashar al-Assad is as abhorrent as they claimed. Keeping men like him away from power is truly the best defense against international war.