by Emil Guillermo
In our polarized country, half of America can’t wait, while many of us still wonder where’s Kamala.
I just hope the convicted felon awaiting to be president again who famously said during the campaign that if elected he’d be a dictator for a day, eats his words.
Dictators aren’t doing so well these days.
Recently the dictator Bashar al-Assad was run out of Syria and sought exile with his puppet master/dictator Vladimir Putin Russia. In just a few weeks, a coalition of rebels applied enough pressure to end a family regime in Syria that lasted 50 years.
Assad’s wealthy family dictatorship plundered Syria and ruled in terror. The family lived in splendor while the people languished.
It sounds all too familiar to Filipino Americans, many of whom came to the U.S. fleeing the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Assad’s end was different from the Filipinos who forged a peaceful People Power movement that chased the Marcos family to Hawaii where they sought refuge from their U.S. puppet handlers.
But as in Manila–there was cheering on the streets of Syria. Men, women, and children. Christians, Muslims, different sects, and ethnicities, all united against the dictator.
There was a raucous sense of joy. Assad was done.
Assad has been described as a genocidal narco-trafficking tyrant, whose friends were America’s biggest enemies, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, on CNN.
Moustafa said it was amazing that there would be no more Russian airstrikes, no more Assad gulags torturing civilians. “It’s very rare in a world where we see so much war, destruction, horrible people doing horrible things. To see good triumph over evil is an amazing thing.”
You need to hear from someone like Moustafa to grasp the significance of the events recently; Otherwise, you might just shrug and say, this is par for the course in the Middle East.
But recent events had some trickle-down.
Consider that we are talking about Assad, the one Tulsi Gabbard consorted with and hyped to her colleagues when she was in Congress. Now Assad has been shamed into exile with his puppet master Russia, and Gabbard wants to be the U.S. director of national security. Given her wrongheaded judgment on Assad, can she be trusted with any national secrets?
It’s still not over in Syria, as now there will be a scramble to see what kind of governing democracy emerges.
Predictably, Donald Trump has said, “The United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved.”
Nouveau isolationism.
But it sounds more like Trump speaking Russian talking points, running interference for his buddy Putin.
Still, what’s happened in Syria has the potential to reshap the politics of the entire Middle East. The U.S. can’t afford to sit back and do nothing. Now is the time to exert peaceful, diplomatic influence on how Syria maintains stability and goes forward with a new democracy.
Overall, the ouster of the dictator should give Trump pause.
Let’s hope Trump who said he would be a dictator on day one learns a lesson from the recent news.
We hear him threaten mass deportations, and the stripping of the Constitution. He talks about gutting the government and cutting back aid to people who need help, forgetting that the United States is not a business. It’s a nation of people, not profits.
The next president sets the tone for a politics that’s already toxic. Will Trump heal us or dance to the YMCA on the country’s open wound?
He needs to remember the joy in Syria when an autocrat was dumped in the name of freedom and democracy.
EMIL GUILLERMO is a journalist and commentator. He’s covered politics from Hawaii to Washington, DC, when he was the first Filipino American to host a national news show, at NPR’s “All Things Considered.” See his talk show and join him at www.patreon.com/emilamok
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