We Need to Have the Courage to Listen to George Washington and Try to Take 'Yes' for an Answer in Syria
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The Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad was swiftly defeated in a week-long campaign, leading to al-Assad’s exile to Moscow, the expulsion of Russian forces, and the establishment of a new government. This marked the unexpected conclusion of the thirteen-year Syrian civil war. However, concerns were raised due to the new government being led by HTS, a group originating from al-Qaeda and the al-Nusra Front in Syria.

The al-Nusra Front was under the leadership of a Syrian jihadi known as ; his actual name is Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa. Al-Julani initially went to Iraq in 2003 to combat US troops and was subsequently captured in 2006, remaining a prisoner of war until his release by Iraqi authorities in 2011. During his captivity, he seemed to transition from militant activities to a more politically inclined role. Upon regaining freedom, he was tasked with establishing an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, which eventually evolved into the al-Nusra Front. Following a conflict with ISIS, al-Nusra separated from al-Qaeda, briefly aligned with the Russians during the Obama administration, and later received support from Turkey around 2017.

In 2017, HTS was formed through the merging of various Syrian factions, with al-Julani emerging as the primary battlefield commander. Through purging jihadist elements from HTS, he solidified his position and eventually assumed leadership when the group’s founder retired. By then, HTS had become a prominent opposition force, but al-Julani faced attacks from his former allies, the Russians.

The predictions of chaos and bloodbath have not materialized; in fact, al-Julani has shown much more interest in stabilizing Syria and building a nation than he has in fomenting jihad or fighting Israel. Let’s just take a brief look at what has happened in Syria since al-Bashar caught the first thing smoking for Moscow.

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Religious Pluralism Exists

Reconstruction is Happening

Government Economic Controls are Being Dismantled

Women are not Officially Oppressed

HTS is Disbanding, and a Single National Army is Forming

No War With Israel

Distance from Iran

Major Diplomatic Offensive

What It Means

While it is much too early to tell what will happen in Syria, the initial signs are encouraging. Unlike nearly any other Arab civil war, reconciliation is given a priority over vengeance. An effort is being made to bring all parts of Syrian society together. While there is no doubt it will be a distinctly Islamic society, al-Julani seems to understand that Syria has enough religious and ethnic diversity that the “one size fits all” model we see in most of the Islamic world will not work. The Russians have abandoned their naval and airbase, removing the Kremlin’s meddling in a delicate situation.

In his Farewell Address, Washington left us with this warning.

Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject. At other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility, instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.

So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld; and it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

Lord Palmerston treats the same subject in a much pithier quote, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

I fear that many on the right have fallen into the trap of seeing American and Muslim relations through the lens of 9/11, and they are willing to see the change of government in Syria as the creation of yet another terrorist breeding ground. Indeed, on social media, some of the accounts most adamantly against US support for Ukraine and so-called “forever wars” by the “neocons” are also in favor of doing nothing to influence the outcome in Syria because of 9/11 and the 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan that they decry.

The initial moves of al-Julani seem to be focused on keeping much of the same multicultural tolerance of the Assad regime without, so far as we can see right now, the terror and repression. Whether al-Julani can ride that particular tiger remains to be seen, but this does seem to be a brief opening where American “soft power” could go a long way toward achieving regional stability. At the least, we should be able to let Syria take the lead in eradicating ISIS and return American troops home; see . Labeling al-Julani as al-Qaeda or pro-ISIS is somewhere between nonsense and dishonesty. Al-Julani’s service with the Iraqi insurgency was not unusual for young men of that place and time. The fact is that when given the opportunity to break with al-Qaeda, he did. And he fought ISIS even when it got him nothing of value. 

If we ignore Washington’s words and treat al-Julani reflexively as an enemy, we risk repeating the same mistake we made when dealing with Ho Chi Minh. We rejected his pleas to achieve Vietnamese independence, and he went elsewhere for help. We owe it to ourselves to take the win we’re being offered. Should al-Julani’s actions reveal something darker, we can always go back to hostilities knowing that we at least gave our best efforts to create a stable Syria, probably under Turkish influence, that is no longer a threat to Israel or a semi-client state of Iran.

There is still a lot of work to do. The State Department lifted a $10 million bounty on Al-Julani, but his HTS group is still under extensive sanctions. Likewise, Syria’s banking sector is under sanctions and will probably need some sort of international oversight to bring it back into the global financial network.

There are reports that some US humanitarian aid is making its way to Syria.

I think the incoming Trump administration is much better suited in talent and philosophy to make the most of Syria’s new government than the collection of nitwits, lackwits, midwits, and f***wits that is Biden’s foreign and defense policy operations. If they are successful, that could be a multi-generational game-changer in the region.

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