Kassioun Editorial 1266: Trump, You Were the One Who Put Him There?

A statement of this sort is not merely a “diplomatic insult”; it is an affront to and belittlement of Syria and Syrians as a whole, because it reveals a patronizing logic in dealing not with a person, but with an entire country—within a traditional colonial mindset that presents itself as the ruler and arbiter of the country’s and people’s fate, imposing whatever and whomever it wishes.

Some try to downplay the gravity and offensiveness of this remark by attributing it to Trump’s personality and his well-known crude style. The danger in such attribution is that it attempts to isolate Trump’s words from the overall US policy toward our country and region, and ignores the endless indicators and facts of US actions toward Syria and the region—of which we may mention, by way of example and not limitation, the following:

First: Regarding the lifting of sanctions, as of the time of writing this editorial the sanctions have not been lifted in any practical or effective way. On the contrary, threats and hints of re-imposing them “legally” have returned, as has recently happened in a session on Syria in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Second: The American-Zionist senator Lindsey Graham, a close friend of Trump, never misses an opportunity to threaten Syria and countries of the region as a whole—including Saudi Arabia recently—in defense of “Israel” and the UAE.

Third: The US ambassador to “Israel”, Mike Huckabee, who describes himself as a Christian Zionist, declared in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson that he has no problem with “Israel” occupying Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, in enforcement of the biblical Zionist narrative.

Fourth: Not long ago, Tom Barrack made remarks describing the peoples of our region as a collection of tribes, clans, and sects; earlier, he had insulted journalists in Lebanon by describing their behavior as animal-like (of course, Tom Barrack did not use this description for his friend Epstein).

We cite these examples—and there are dozens more—to say that Trump’s remarks are neither a slip of the tongue nor an isolated position. Rather, they express a specific mindset of official policy among the ruling elite in the US, across its various currents.

The lessons we should draw from such statements can be summarized as follows:

First: Under no circumstances can the US be treated as an ally—not by the Syrian authorities, nor by the Syrian people, nor by any side in Syria, whether political or social.

Second: Neither the US nor any other external power can be relied upon to achieve internal legitimacy or internal stability. Indeed, the best that can be obtained from the US is to ward off its harm, if possible.

Third: The only viable and sustainable solution is to rely on the Syrian people—all the Syrian people—by unifying them across all their political and social components and lifting injustices off them. The path toward this unity is singular and has no alternative: empowering them with the right to determine their own destiny, through genuine participation that begins with an inclusive general national conference bringing together all political and social forces. All outstanding crises—both new and those accumulated over decades—must be put on the table at said conference, so the internal consensuses of which have the final say on all issues.

(English Version)