A rebel alliance has seized control of Syria after capturing Aleppo and Damascus and forcing former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to seek refuge in Moscow. At the helm of that alliance is a man named Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly an al-Qaeda commander who used the wartime alias Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Jolani was designated as a high-value terrorist by the United States in 2011. In 2016, al-Jolani publicly severed ties with al-Qaeda and sought to moderate some of his political positions.
The former al-Qaeda commander recently dropped his alias and is now making broad overtures to the outside world about building a new Syria for all Syrians, a complete reversal from the extremist positions he took in 2014. Global security experts remain cautiously skeptical about how genuine al-Sharaa’s political transformation actually is.
Syrian civil society groups say that at least 617,910 civilians have died in Syria’s civil war since March 2011.
Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich celebrates the fall of the notorious Assad dynasty and hopes for the end of civil war, but warns Americans against overly optimistic expectations for Syria’s future under Ahmed al-Sharaa. Regardless, Gingrich argues, this is not America’s war, and America should refrain from becoming too involved in whatever happens next.
The following is an excerpt from the above video:
Now, Americans, particularly the foreign policy elite, are going to be tempted to overstate what this all means. They’re going to be tempted to suggest that, if only we intervene cleverly, that we can somehow get a democracy in a place which has had a dictatorship of crushing brutality. You’re going to suggest that the leader of the group that won the fight for Damascus, a man who’s in [a] terror organization, has been on a terrorist watchlist because it was allied with al-Qaeda, that somehow he’s matured, and he has playing the media perfectly. He’s talked about the fact, you know, “When I was younger, I did a number of bad things, but now that I’ve gotten older and more mature, I realize one has to be realistic.“
I think personally, that the United States will be very careful about getting involved there. I hope that we will decide that we’ve learned a lesson, a painful, deep, bitter lesson in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and many years ago in Vietnam.
This is not our fight. This is not our job. We can feel sad for people. We can hope they do better, but we should not send American troops and American money to get in the middle of that mess.
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