PUTIN LOST TODAY - BUT TRUMP STILL WANTS TO SURRENDER TO HIM

“How did you go bankrupt?" “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Tulsi Gabbard must be crying her eyes out; her good buddy Bashar al-Assad is no longer the dictator of Syria.

Generations of Syrians lived and died since 1970 in a country colloquially known as “Assad’s Syria,” a dictatorship where children learned the walls had ears, where a misplaced word could lead to disappearance in a one-party, one-family, one-man rule, that began with President Hafez al-Assad, and has ended with his son, Bashar.

The end of Assad’s Syria came as Hemingway described bankruptcy - which is what this was. Political bankruptcy. The defeat was as stunning as it was swift, taking only 11 days for Assad’s armed opponents to bring down the regime after a three year “period of stability” that was actually deadlock. The fall of Damascus this morning marked the end of a campaign that began in March, 2011, when peaceful protests associated with that year’s “Arab Spring” transformed into a civil war pitting many different armed rebel groups and foreign jihadi fighters against both the Syrian military and each other.

The war had been stalemated since 2018; Syria was a unified state in name only.

The northwestern province of Idlib was controlled by Sunni Islamists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (H.T.S.), a coalition led by the group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda.

Its oil-rich northeast was dominated first by ISIS and then by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which are supported by the U.S.

The northwest was the territory of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army.

Jordanian-influenced rebel groups were in and out of control in pockets of the south.

The rest was what remained of “Assad’s Syria.”

The region, long a battleground for external powers seeking to expand their influence, is now a stark reminder of the dangers of imperial overreach.

The big losers are Russia and Iran, the Assad regime’s chief backers, now overextended and unable to maintain their footholds in Syria.

The history of this finale begins on November 27th, the same day a ceasefire took hold between Israel and Hezbollah, in neighboring Lebanon. That is crucial, because it marked the Israeli defeat of Hezbollah, ending the terrorist group’s role as a major player in regional politics. This has affected both the war in Gaza - which no longer sees the Palestinians supported by rockets fired into Israel by Hezbollah militants - and the war in Syria.

With the destruction of Hezbollah as a major support force for Bashar al-Assad, H.T.S. and its allies immediately pushed south from Idlib, taking cities quickly, with little resistance on the part of a crumbling state hollowed out by years of U.S.-imposed sanctions, endemic corruption, and Israeli air strikes on the military infrastructure.

This morning, Bashar al-Assad fled in a private plane shortly before Damascus International Airport was closed. Only a few weeks earlier, the dictator attended the Arab League meeting in Saudi Arabia, where he was welcomed back following years of estrangement. He made no statement to the nation regarding his departure. Prime Minister, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali made a statement that he remained in Damascus, ready to facilitate an orderly transition.

The peaceful handover of power in Damascus was marked by scenes typical of such a moment: jubilation, people cheering and tearing down posters of the Assads; tearful citizens hurrying through a deserted airport; people emerging dazed and disheveled from prisons; soldiers abandoning their posts. Assad’s army of conscripts wasn’t prepared to die for the dictatorship.

This is the result of Russia being tied down in its losing battle in Ukraine, where it has lost nearly half a million troops, killed and wounded, in almost three years of warfare in which the Russian Bear has turned out to not be so bearlike. Russia’s global influence is in steep decline, with Putin’s imperial aspirations and his economic capacities overstretched. Moldova continues to turn pro-European, resisting Russian influence, as is also now happening in Romania with the exposure of Putin’s attempted subverson of the recent vote in that country. In Georgia, civil protests and government crackdowns now threaten the stability of its pro-Russian government.

It is also the result of the defeat of Iran by Israel, leaving that would-be regional power shown to not have the power it claimed. The “Axis of Resistance” alliance - Syria, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas - are now exposed to being neutralized by the fact Iran has lost much of its ability to project power beyond its borders.

Abu Mohammed al-Julani, head of H.T.S., previously the leader of Al Qaeda in Syria, and before that a member of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State of Iraq, has issued statements reassuring Syria’s many religious minorities, including the Alawites, Christians and other religions, that his group has embraced pluralism and religious tolerance; this can be filed under “we shall see.” He remains a U.S.-designated terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head. The anti-Assad opposition’s history of bloody infighting will be tested by victory. Compounding this uncertainty is the risk that the power vacuum in Syria could give rise to a radical Islamic regime, further destabilizing the region and undermining efforts toward lasting peace.

Turkey has long backed various rebel groups and has de-facto control of much of the north. The U.S. has 900 troops supporting Kurdish-led groups in the northeast. Israel - within hours of Assad’s departure - invaded the Syrian city of Quneitra near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

If the United States was still going to be run by the competent next month, we would now be on the verge of destroying Russia as a competitor and letting Xi Jinping know how far he can go, along with ending the Iranian-backed opposition in the Middle East. The “authoritarian alternative to democracy” would be gasping for air. That may not sound “pretty” to political idealists, but since neither Nirvana nor Utopia is likely to be proclaimed in my lifetime, I damn sure prefer us to them.

Literally, the only thing that can now save Putin is the Orange Clusterfuck’s desire to surrender to his tender mercies and tear us apart because his sick, twisted psyche is so damaged by the fact civilized society saw him as the piece of shit he was born to be and left him with his nose pressed to a glass door that was never going to be opened to the likes of him. That we are expected hand this country over to traitors who campaigned on a promise to commit this destruction enrages me beyond my ability to put it in words.

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