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In a stunning win for freedom, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni terrorist organization defeated the Assad regime and its Shiite terrorist groups to take over Syria. HTS is led by Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, a Saudi former associate of the caliph of ISIS who has a $10 million reward on his head from the U.S. while Assad was supported by Hezbollah whose leaders had multi-million dollar rewards on their heads until Israel killed them (but didn’t collect the money.)
Assad was backed by the Shiite terror state of Iran while HTS is backed by the Sunni terror state of Turkey. Geopolitical experts say that Sunni Islamists defeating Shiite Islamists to rule the pile of rubble that’s left of Syria is the biggest win for human freedom since the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt and parts of North Africa (before being ousted from Egypt and some other parts of the region) in the freedom phenomenon known as the Arab Spring.
The media broadcast scenes of Jihadists praising Allah for helping them defeat the other Jihadists who also praise Allah (but not in the right way) and liberating political prisoners to shortly replace them with other political prisoners (assuming that they even bother taking political prisoners or any kind of prisoners.) Talks are underway between the terrorists of the former regime with the terrorists of the current regime to see if they can work it out.
And maybe just focus on killing Christians, Jews and other infidels.
Some might suspect that a former ISIS associate tied to Al Qaeda (who admittedly turned on his former group to lead another Jihadist organization) taking over a country would be bad news. But they’re clearly bad people who don’t realize that Al-Jawlani is a changed man, an austere religious scholar who underwent a makeover courtesy of Queer Eye for the Syrian Guy and now, in the words of the BBC, wears a “more western style wardrobe”. At least if you count rocking Zelensky’s military fatigue hand-me-downs as looking like a regular western warlord.
The Biden administration has already made contact with the terrorist organization led by a man on whose head is a $10 million reward to offer to rebuild Syria just in time for the next civil war. Publicly, the administration has already taken credit for helping defeat Assad by insisting that the Israelis must stop attacking Hezbollah at once. Had the Israelis listened, Assad would still be in power. But the Biden administration was surely using reverse psychology and by threatening Israel with an arms embargo was really getting the Israelis to fight even harder.
Or at least that’s the story that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is going with.
While the world (or at least the parts of it that completely forgot about the Arab Spring) rejoices, the Israeli government which (for all its failings) has more sense than the State Department or a headless chicken, has begun bombing what’s left of Syria’s rocket factories and chemical warfare plants that Secretary of State John Kerry (despite promising Obama) somehow never got around to making sure that Vladimir Putin would dismantle and put away in cold storage.
The Israelis are also expanding their presence in Mt. Hermon and building their own security zone because they trust Syria’s new terrorist masters as much as they trusted the old.
What Jerusalem knows and Foggy Bottom has yet to learn is that the Middle East is a bunch of tribal factions, warlords and gangs pretending to be countries, but despite the flags, anthems, UN memberships, World Bank positions and invites to climate change summits, are all some version of Al-Jawlani bouncing between ISIS, Al Qaeda and a new governing coalition.
Over a thousand years of Islam comes down to some guy with a beard uniting a few key families with whose backing he then seizes a bunch of cities that used to belong to long lost great civilizations and then his men settle down to some murdering, looting and raping while thanking Allah for the privilege of a mission to kill, loot and rape the world. Or die trying.
The stationary bandit theory isn’t some abstraction in the Middle East: it’s everyday reality.
As we all should have learned in the last generation, every Arab Muslim country is one inflationary spiral away from some guy with a ‘nom de guerre’ or ‘kunya’ riding into town on a pickup truck with 300 fellow bandits and becoming the new government in Allah’s name.
Georgetown idiots with PhDs then cheer as statues of the old dictator are toppled as if Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, Tripoli or Tunis were Prague, Berlin or any city where democracy means more than ‘my tribe has more guns than your tribe’. The old Pharaohs (not to mention Caesars) would tear down each other’s monuments too. That didn’t make old Tutankhamen a liberator or a democrat. At least not the kind who is acceptable outside Chicago.
Assad heading off to shop at Moscow’s GUM for more luxury handbags is no great loss and his replacement by other terrorists is no great gain. At least not for us. Or likely for Syria’s Christians. Or Israel. Or really anyone else except members of the new regime.
There’s no right side of history in the middle east and if the arc bends anywhere, it’s the arc of a sword over a prone prisoner’s neck. Islam is the driving force in the region and the driving force of Islam is conquering and subjugating all Muslims and non-Muslims under one caliphate. In the Ummah, all of history is one great game of thrones to determine who will rule over all the rubble.
The complicated chess game between rival Jihadist groups and nation-states is likely to end badly for everyone especially since Syria was really a showdown between Iran, which is developing nuclear weapons, and Turkey, which is a NATO member with a huge arsenal, and there can only be one ultimate Islamic ruler in the apocalyptic endgame scenario.
Terrorists replacing terrorists with more terrorists is only good news for the new terrorists and for the media which gets to breathlessly cover another foreign conflict between two groups of butchers who would behead everyone at CNN at their first sight of a DEI LGBTQ+ poster.
It’s also good news for humanitarian groups which have spent over a year lying about a famine in Gaza and after exhausting donor interest with AI generated photos of sad Muslim kids in Hamasville can now move on to relabeling those same photos as hungry kids in Syria.
Media baron William Randolph Hearst reportedly once bragged, “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.” In the Muslim world, the Taliban, Houthis, Hamas and their comrades supply the war, the media supplies the pictures and taxpayers supply more money than they can count.
After sending $2 billion to Afghanistan after the Taliban took over, the Biden administration will be rushing money to Syria until the very moment the checkbooks are pried out of their hands.
It would be tempting to think that Syria is over, but in tribal cultures nothing is ever really over. Each conflict is based on past vendettas and generates new ones. The conflicts follow demographics and a complex mix of clan loyalties and factions whose shifts change the war. A new war is just a matter of the old coalition coming apart and forming new ones. If you doubt that, consider the speed with which the Jihadists took Kabul and Damascus. The Taliban and HTS are just groups of gangs whose allegiances can be bought and sold for the right price.
But the same proved to be true of the Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian armies. And many others.
Syria did not fall. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, it never really existed. We spend a lot of time and money propping up fictions because we want the rest of the world to be just like us. It’s not.
And it may never be.
Instead of hoping to civilize savages, we would be better off standing with civilized allies. The more we go on searching for progress in the Muslim world, the more we find that it’s terrorists all the way down.
Mr. Greenfield,
This is absolutely the best written, and most comprehensive description of what is happening in the Muslim world I have ever read. Can you sneak into the next United Nations Summit and make sure they all get a copy? You said in a few paragraphs more than most world leaders say in their lifetime. Thank you so much for your honest journalism!
Bert Arnold
Thank you. If I managed to do that, I suspect I’d be put on trial at the ICC.
Obviously many on this site agree.
I’d say it’s Daniel’s best piece.
But he’s written a lot of really good stuff, so I won’t go that far.
Correct and extremely well put….
That has to be the most honest assessment of the Middle East Islamic rubble rousers I’ve ever read. I read their book, a “peaceful religion” is a delusional wests way of avoiding reality and who seem eager to be lied to. Look around the world people, the dominoes are falling. When it comes to Islam and the modern world, the lesson of history is that we don’t learn from history.
They don’t learn from history. And we don’t learn from their history.
Thanks Daniel, I enjoyed that article.
Yes, it’s all true.
I hate islamopithicines.
$10 million bounty – a few of these captures would be a nice stake. Jeff, wanna become a high stakes bounty hunter?
Point me at the targets!
Finally, someone telling it like it is. Thanks Daniel.
It is time, long overdue, for the west to stop interfering in foreign wars.
All foreign ambassadors and embassies should be there for trade and a safe place for citizens and nothing else with zero diplomatic immunity.
Sometimes the foreign wars come looking for us. That’s all too true with Islam.
Why did my mind just flash upon the image of an “ingrown hair” when thinking about Islam?
I see a rather nasty infected ingrown nail.
I must agree with my fellow readers, a very fine and informative article. And, that line ‘my tribe has more guns than your tribe’ hits the nail on the preverbal head.
I asked ChatGPT who would the gamblers using online betting apps be leaning towards in the hypothetical future global battle between China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative and Islam’s Global Sharia-driven Caliphate?
AI’s answer was exactly what I figured.
Democracy in the Muslim world is defined by the majority oppressing the minority.
When I was 12 (in the early 60’s), my uncle, who lived in London and had lived all over the Middle East as an oilfield engineer after the war, took me to Egypt to accompany him on a business trip, Looking out at the Nile from our hotel, I saw a dhow crewed by Arabs with black prisoners in chains. At first I thought it was a local law enforcement function, but my uncle said the prisoners were actually Christian slaves. I was surprised to learn that slavery still existed in the world and was common in Arab Muslim countries.
I think we can expect the radical groups that overthrew Assad to now start fighting each other for power being each other’s biggest surviving rivals.
Great analysis with the right touch of sarcasm and wit!
I’ve long advocated for rewarding the jihadists with what they worship – the 7th Century! Israel took a big step in sending them BACK to the 7th by blowing up their air force and navy and chemical weapons! That should be standard response towards any terrorist action! Destroy anything invented after the 7th Century and let them fester in their misery. I do empathize with the decent people there and hope they will leave for a less terroristic nation. Maybe Israel will establish a zone for those Christians and Jews who flee from islam now that they have more of their RIGHTFUL territory!
Totally enjoyed your article!!
Refugees from these hellholes become the terrorists of their host nations all too often. All refugees should be remanded to another Muslim nation, not to the West,
One more reason not to deploy American troops to the region.
Thousands of years of hatred can not be stopped.
Let Israel decide what’s best for their future.
My hope and prayers are that President Donald Trump will aid England, France and Germany in removing the islamists from their countries quickly,
I’d rather he emptied our country of Islamists..
As much as i love that idea, there’s a huge problem with that.
The filthy politicians of these countries and their idiot supporters don’t WANT moslems removed from them.
My own opinion runs along the lines that they are using moslems as a private army to put down people like us, who want our countries back, who are against communism, wef, davos, etc etc, and the politicians believe that when we’re all suitably oppressed, they will rule like the worst of the dictators the world has ever seen rolled into one and we will all be their slaves forever.
What they haven’t worked out is that the moslems won’t give up any power they get, and they will fight to the death, and use any method available, to keep it.
I’d love to be around to watch them get theirs.
They seem to really really like them.
AND THE USA WATERING THE ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM…. IRAN’S MULLAHS!
Their trees bare many fruit… that fruit falls to the ground, its seeds dry, watered, and now more trees baring more fruit. On and On and On we go.
GET TO THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM… dig it out… poison it… burn it. Until this happens, the World will be filled with rotten trees.
PEOPLE POWER took down The Wall, The Iron Curtain, Ferdinand Marcos, THE SHAH, and others. THE IRANIAN PEOPLE MUST EXERT THEIR POWER! Israel and U.S. shouldn’t have to do it but might have to if Iran continues their nuclear weapons program. If Iran builds some, buys some, or is given some, they will use them which will cause a World War fought with nukes. Where are the anti-nuke protesters since here’s their chance to stop a country from building them because once they have them, it will be too late because they’ll never give them up.
“THE ONLY POWER THAT CAN KNOCK THE DAM DOWN, IS THE WATER BEHIND IT!” SC
The ending of the Shah brought the Mullahs. Persians just can’t catch a break.
So brilliant! The best ever.
The UN is still the worlds #1 Terrorists Supporters for the fact that many UN Nations are Terrorists Supporters
I once stated at a dinner party that we didn’t have to do anything about the muslims as they would eventually stone each other to death. That comment did not make me popular.
Terrorists Liberate Terrorists From Other Terrorists
One sect after another want to kill the other. Islam is the cult of death, hate and oppression. If they tire of assaulting democracy, jews, christians and women, they will and are hurling the rocks at each other.
NATO Ally Erdogan Looks Forward to West’s Collapse
And he touts Islam’s “human-centered civilization” over the West’s “blood, tears, massacres and exploitation.”
December 3, 2024 by Robert Spencer
Turkey Urges Victorious Syrian Jihadis to Turn Against Kurds
John Hayward
9 Dec 2024
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Sunday urged the al-Qaeda-linked jihadi rebels who toppled Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to consider teaming up with Turkish forces against the Kurds.
“Opposition groups should be united now,” Fidan said — by which he meant every “opposition group” except the Kurds.
FPM is finally getting the recognition it deserves. It’s been both the benchmark and touchstone of critical thinking on all-things anti-American, and has for years warned us of the metastasizing Red/Green Axis of Resistance across the globe.
Thank you. We’re telling the truth and keeping up the fight.
Daniel greenfield… the best always …“right on”……the west thinks that we can buy friends in the Middle East, we are only renting !
We think we’re renting to own when we’re actually hiring enemies who pretend to be our friends.
In the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy… is ALSO my enemy!
Daniel, What an astute analysis; mega-kudos from the Rockies. It brought to memory that the Czech commies subservient to Kremlin trained anti-Israel islamist jihadis in the late ’60s already. Appreciate your mentioning of Prague & Berlin as democratic cities. The situation on the ground is not as rosy. Was shocked that !~53%! of Czechs would’ve voted for the nasty & vacuous Que-mala. Unified Berlin is bursting in seams w/ eco-fascists, commies, socialists & other woke regressive vermin. Prez Ronnie “Tear down this wall” Reagan must be spinning in the grave.
One has to mention that Pepe Chicom Bidon & his cabal of klintonistas & obamabots is feverishly spending our taxes in Syria; millions, maybe a cool billion before they are cut off of the public teat/trough. While our people in the Carolinas still live in tents. Sick.
Greenfield and I are on the same track. I explored the subject in my April 17, 2017 Washington Times piece, “A sober look at the confusion in Assad’s· Syria. It’s fantasy to think US backing anti Assad forces will lead to peace” Americans like to think there’s a good guy out there, newsflash, there aren’t.
Daniel:
An astute and insightful synopsis of the current events in the middle east. In a strange sense, your article brings to mind the movie Groundhog Day where the same day keeps recurring over and over again. By that I mean it seems that the same cycle of events keeps happening over and over again in the middle east.
Moreover, with few exceptions, the middle east has never been a stable region of the world and as such there can be little doubt that the new rulers of Syria will be overthrown sometime in the the not to distant future and replaced with an equally murderous and incompetent regime. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
The country to watch in all this is Turkey who’s ruler, Erdogan, is trying to establish Islamic hegemonic rule over the entire region. My bet is that once achieved, he and his Sunni Muslim confederates will set their sights on the Iranians who are Shiite muslims and also not ethnically Arabs.
It’s that old default Shiites against Sunnis aka Muslims against Muslims, Islam against itself, and when that’s not happening it’s a biff-up with so-called infidels. Genesis 16:12 prophesied correctly about Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arabs, now mostly Moslems: “He shall be a wild donkey of a man,
his hand against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”
If Abraham and Sarah had been patient and waited on God’s promise this ongoing turmoil would have been avoided. But no, they rationalized and relegated God’s sovereignty into second place below their own.
Sarah was the one who got impatient and told Abraham to do the deed with the slave. And of course, he had to make his wife happy. We have this mess thanks to Sarah.
After a few days of the “new improved” regime in Syria, journalists in the know are already saying that the situation is going from disastrous to catastrophic, with lots of wanton murders in the streets ON VIDEO, massacres erupting around the country, women being forced to adopt Sharia law restrictions a la the Taliban, government chaos snowballing, civilization, or what’s left of it, collapsing. But Assad, who may end up looking like a tarnished boy scout compared to al-Jolani and his gang if they go full ISIS, is gone, yippie, and never mind the consequences (said the spider to the fly).
The various terrorist Islamist groups are on the march like released Matryoshka nesting dolls with the same face. It is too early for optimism, except for the usual Gorbasm crowd.
Excellent article. Good comments. Didn’t even see a troll.
Tangent: Biden has given away billions of dollars in the last few months. He’s also released $10B to Iran, if I understood correctly.
Meanwhile … folks in NC are still freezing. Springfield is still a 3rd world hole. East Palestine OH has yet to be cleaned up. Lahaina residents are still suffering.
At the risk of being just repeating what’s become a cliche …
Can Americans get a break from these people? If we identified as mass-murdering terrorists would they spend some of our money on us? Or at least just STOP funding terrorism?
Can someone ask Trump to claw back some of these funds?
Didn’t we just bomb 75 sites in Syria? ISIS right? Not Assad’s forces? How does that work?
So now … we have to give them our money so they can buy weapons to restock their piles …
… and this is good how?
I think my point here is that the problem seems to be in Washington. Not of these terrorists could do jack without money from somewhere.
It isn’t terrorists. It’s anti-civilizationists all the way back to before their prophet. And they serve the interests of the anti-civilizationists that stand against western civilization.