Après Moi le Déluge

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal lead their opinion pages today with anti-Assad editorials. The editors of the NYT declaim:

It is now tragically apparent that degrading the Islamic State has not created an opening for peace in Syria. Instead, the country’s vicious president, Bashar al-Assad, and his enablers in Russia and Iran have exploited the battlefield successes against ISIS to unleash a new round of carnage on civilians, as the leaders of the United States and other world powers largely stand by, unwilling or unable to do anything to stop it. Shame on them all.

The Assad-led bombardment of eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb of about 400,000 people and one of the last rebel-held areas, is being called one of the most violent episodes of the seven-year war. Since Sunday at least 310 people, many of them children, have been killed. That’s in addition to nearly 500,000 Syrians killed countrywide since 2011.

Ghouta has been under siege for years, although it’s technically part of a negotiated de-escalation zone, leaving the district facing chronic shortages of food, medicine, medical personnel and other necessities.

This week’s massive attack — which has involved rocket fire, shelling, airstrikes and helicopter-dropped barrel bombs that struck hospitals and other civilian infrastructure — intensified the misery. It seems intended to force rebels to surrender so the government can reclaim the territory. Most of the civilian casualties resulted from airstrikes on residential areas, the United Nations’ human rights office said. There have been signs that a government ground assault may soon follow.

while the editors of the WSJ lament:

Bashar Assad’s Syrian military committed more atrocities this week, bombing the opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta and killing at least 200. Rescue workers had to haul dead civilians from the rubble, including a family of five. As everyone deplores the killings, the point to keep in mind is that the driving political power here is Iran and its attempt to make Syria part of its growing Shiite-Persian empire.

Iran has propped up Assad since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, and along with Russia is largely responsible for the regime’s survival. After its 2016 victory in Aleppo and the ouster of Islamic State from Raqqa, this axis is now trying to roll up the last opposition strongholds. The trio will then use Russia-sponsored peace talks to re-establish Assad’s control over Syria. Russia will keep its military bases, and Iran wants to establish a new imperial outpost on the border with Israel.

Assad is terrible. I’m in complete agreement with that. Where we disagree is that I think that any foreseeable government in Syria will be terrible and we should be cautious about which misery we seek to inflict on the Syrians.

A little background. In the Northeast of Syria along the coast is the homeland of people who practice a distinctive version of Islam, loosely related to the Shi’ism practiced in Iran and in the Arab Gulf states. It’s trinitarian, after a fashion, something abhorrent to Muslims who practice more conventional forms of the religion. These people are referred to as “Alawites”.

Under the Ottoman the Alawites were persecuted, their rights were severely limited, they experienced periodic pogroms, and by every account they were miserably poor. When the French established their Mandate in Syria following World War I, they put the Alawites in charge, first of their own statelet, then of Syria.

In the 1960s Hafez al-Assad, an Alawite general, was one of the founders of Syria’s secularist Ba’ath movement and quickly became Syria’s military dictator, an event that has been compared with a member of the untouchable caste becoming maharajah. Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s present leader, is Hafez al-Assad’s son.

He represents not just the al-Assad family but a whole cadre of Alawites in the Syrian government and they have plenty to fear. It’s estimated that as many as a third of Alawite men have been killed in the civil war with the rebels. They’re literally fighting for their own survival and that of their people.

If Assad were eliminated he would merely be replaced by another Alawite who would do all of the same things that Assad has done for all of the same reasons. The alternative is that he would be replaced by a violent, radical Islamist, i.e. Al Qaeda or DAESH, who would proceed to exterminate the Alawites and, as we have seen, would be even worse than Assad.

So, editors of the NYT and WSJ, name your poison. Whom do you support? A secularist albeit a despicable secularist or a violent radical Islamist?