We Syrians, the victims, are being punished for the acts of our executioner. It doesn’t matter if I’m on a terrorist list. The important thing is to lift the sanctions, recovering the money stolen from Syrians, and pressuring Israel to put an end to its operations in Syria. Syria won’t be used to target other countries. Syrians are tired and just need to live in peace.
Ahmed al-Sharaa (Syria’s de facto leader)
The House Administration Oversight Committee has referred Liz Cheney to the FBI for tampering with a January 6 witness. A “malicious and cowardly assault” says Cheney. Too bad the president-elects says she “should be investigated by the FBI.” Hmmm… if her feud with Trump began with her support for never-ending wars, why not appoint her ambassador to Syria? Then, she can stare down those nine rifles aimed at her face. No joke; with Assad gone, let Liz go nation-build in sunny Damascus.
After all, it’s business as usual in Syria. Turkey has sent reinforcements to help the Syrian National Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) push our Kurd friends out of the area. The US and UK have sent special forces to help the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) create a homeland. If war breaks out – because the HTS was once part of al Qaeda, Turkey hates the Kurds, and Israel has an itchy trigger finger – Liz can always call her daddy for advice.
Maybe not, because 77.3 million Trump voters proved the bloom is off the “Cheney” name. Dick’s great War on Terror ended with Islamists in charge of Afghanistan and the Middle East. Liz’s threats to MAGA Republicans (“Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain”) ended with her 2022 primary loss by 37 points, and her campaigning against Trump helped Kamala Harris lose the 2024 presidential popular vote by 2.3 million ballots (and every swing state).
The pictures above simplify the “Cheney” problem (left to right). Liz Cheney rode Trump’s coattails to win her daddy’s congressional seat, then slammed Trump for criticizing her daddy’s “never-ending” wars that created no new American allies. However, Cheney’s wars did create casualties of war like my representative, Brian Mast, who’s shown patriotically campaigning for re-election to Congress, where he’s the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
It’s 2024, and 65% of voters prefer actual veterans of war like Brian Mast, Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard to stay-at-home hawks like Cheney (source: RCP average). Those voters just re-elected Trump, who heard everyday folks complain about never-ending wars that did not improve the lives of women in Afghanistan or make the Middle East safe for Christians and Jews. Now, he’s nominated Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, and said “this is not our fight” in Syria.
Businessman Trump is results-focused: the War on Terror resulted in 7,085 dead and 53,533 wounded US military, 38 million displaced Arabs, $8 trillion added to US national debt, and not one “rebuilt” nation. The deaths of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi resulted in chaos, and secular civilian leadership failed in in Egypt and Syria; so, Mr. Trump has rightly concluded Islam is culturally incompatible with peace, secularism, and western-style democracy.
This week, the US removed the bounty on Ahmed al-Sharaa (Syria’s current leader), and America’s involvement should stop there. Syria’s Sunni-Shia-Christian-Druze religious mix is ripe for a sectarian civil war. Israeli and Turkish militaries are currently creating a partitioned pseudo-state. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, are American allies, but they’re kinda-sorta squaring off to fight over Syria’s future.
Erdoğan, after defeating Russia in Armenia and Iran in Syria, wants to exert control of the Aegean in the west and the Levant in the south, meaning US support for the Kurds risks a proxy war with Turkey. Netanyahu, after neutering Hamas and Hezbollah, wants to prevent an ISIS resurgence by creating an IDF militarized zone that will look like “Israeli occupation” to many Muslims. President-elect Trump is wise to want no part in what comes next in Syria – and for good reason.
The Ayatollah is now isolated in the Middle East, and a new Trump trade embargo will bankrupt the Islamic Republic of Iran. With Russia now absent from the Middle East, jump-starting the Abraham Accords can resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel has proven itself the military match for its enemies, so it is quite enough for the US to provide economic and political muscle.
Middle East envoy Witkoff should promote an “economic prosperity zone” to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. UN ambassador Elise Stefanik should counter the United Nations’ anti-Israeli positions by defunding its operations. Attorney General Pam Bondi should protect Jewish Americans by revoking the visas of pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic foreigners demonstrating on US soil. President Trump should do whatever is necessary to free American hostages being held by Hamas.
We the people voted for common sense, good results, and accountability. That’s why presumptive defense secretary Pete Hegseth should put the Pentagon in a time out chair until he gets a clean audit, administers consequences for the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and gets US soldiers – including special forces – the heck out of Syria (read the new leader’s BS quote up top).
However, if Liz Cheney wants to make friends and influence policy in Damascus…