reflectivepundit

Strongman al-Assad is Gone. What Now?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

During the last decade, the al-Qaeda related al-Nusra Front was in Syria a minor player in comparison to what was for several years the far larger ISIS organization. Like anyone else following the news, I was surprised by the rapid fall of Syria’s strongman Bashar al-Assad last weekend. I was far more surprised by the leading role that al-Nusra’s successor group Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) played in the rebellion against Assad.

What now? HTS is among those entities that are designated terrorist organizations in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and other Western countries. HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani is among Washington’s most wanted terrorists with a $10 Mill. reward for information that would lead his arrest.

HTS and al-Jolani seem in control of Damascus, other big cities, and a big chunk of Syrian real estate. According to their Telegram channel and in public declarations they try to keep enough of the institutions of government working so that the country does not suffer the same fate as others after the fall of their authoritarian rulers. Just think what happened in Iraq and in Libya after the fall of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi—endless civil wars between a multitude of factions.

For several years now, al-Jolani has denounced al-Qaeda’s global terrorist agenda and instead embraced the liberation of Syria from the strongman Assad rule as his and his group’s only objective. Today, in Damascus, he dropped his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and reclaimed his real name Ahmed al-Shara—I suppose to signal his change from terrorist to a now celebrated freedom fighter.

Whether one believes that this man has changed or not, he is now perhaps the most important player in efforts to prevent another horrific consequence in the wake of another strongman’s fall from power. To that end, I understand why London, Paris, and Washington are considering the removal of HTS from their lists of terrorist organizations which would facilitate diplomatic contacts with the new power holder in Damascus.

Initially, at least, there are signs of a swift cooperation between the victorious rebels and high officials of the al-Assad government. The first goal is to establish and maintain order and security. The HTS leader has asked bureaucrats and police to return to work.

Making progress domestically will depend also on the role of former government officials and all kinds of professionals who are now returning from abroad ready to join in the rebuilding of a stable state and one in which the rights of ethnic and religious minorities are assured.

It will be difficult for Ahmed al-Shara to keep the various groups involved in the rebellion united.

What neighboring countries and the international community of nations can and will do and what the fall of strongman Assad means for the new geopolitical realities in the Middle East and the rest of the world, poses another set of questions without definitive answers.

After Biden Pardoned his Son Critics Go Bananas

By Brigitte L. Nacos

President Joe Biden said repeatedly that he would not pardon his son Hunter. At a time, when America’s democracy was under sustained attack by the incoming president and the far-right cast he has selected for key positions in his administration, Biden’s promise spoke to his respect for democratic institutions, including the system of justice.  

Biden changed his mind. Last weekend, he granted his son a total pardon for a more than 10-year period. That same weekend, president-elect Trump nominated his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France. In 2020, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, a convicted felon; at the same time, a bunch of criminally convicted Trump associates were pardoned as well. More recently, Trump promised repeatedly that he would pardon the “political prisoners” convicted for violent crimes during the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol “on day one” of his second term as president.

Although Trump used his constitutional pardon power excessively, critics claim that Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter makes it more likely that Trump will expand this veto power even further in his second term. Nonsense. Trump does not need a precedent. He makes his extreme rules as he goes along.  

While there was no outcry against Trump’s nomination of a family member with a criminal record for a top ambassadorship, Trump himself, many Republicans and Democrats, plus plenty of media commentators went bananas after the news broke that Biden pardoned his son.

“Biden was dishonest,” “Biden lied,” were common headlines and comments in the news. The chorus of critics grew and became louder every day. Where was and is the same outrage, the same anger, when Donald Trump lies day-in and day-out? Whereas being dishonest is mostly ignored when it applies to Trump, Biden is held to a higher standard for this one lie even by those who accept and embrace their Dear Leader’s perennial aversion to truth.

According to Biden’s critics, the president’s claim that Hunter was prosecuted because he was his son, is in tune with Trump’s hostility against the justice system that the former president considers part of “the deep state.” But unlike Trump during his presidency, President Biden did not interfere with judicial decisions—and not with the prosecutions of his son who was found guilty of tax evasion and falsely filling out an application form for his gun permit during a time, when he was an alcohol- and drug addict.  

A good guess is that the real reason for Biden’s turnaround on pardoning Hunter was the nomination of Kash Patel for the position of FBI director. Patel, like his idol Trump, has been tireless in pledging retribution for the alleged but not real persecution of President Trump by the FBI and the Department of Justice. The Bidens are on top of the MAGA reprisal list followed by many other leading Democrats, “disloyal” former members of the Trump administration, and critical media personalities.

What parents would not use their legal power to protect their son from a future power holder who has threatened a “bloodbath,” when talking about the existential fight against the “enemy within” and the public execution of his most evil enemies?

Donald Trump’s Rush to Strongman Rule

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Donald Trump’s nominations of Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, Tulsi Gabbard for Director of Intelligence, and Matt Gaetz for Attorney General drove the reality home that the former and future U.S. president follows his fascist campaign rhetoric and the equally undemocratic “Project 25” playbook as he selects the supporting cast for his second presidency.

Trump did not hide his sinister plans during his campaign. On the contrary. He repeated, again and again, that he and his MAGA crowd were in an existential battle against the demonic “enemy within” which he attacked as more dangerous than foreign enemies. Thus, the alleged “deep state” of “liberals, socialists, and communists” had to be destroyed to make way for the MAGA revolution.

Trump added to his many lies, when he claimed no knowledge of “Project 25” during the campaign. Now, he and his transition team and some authors of the detailed blueprint for the deconstruction of the administrative state are hard at work to implement the prescription for building a government in which the Dear Leader has total power.

I know that the term “fascist” is over- and misused. Trump, like other fascists before him, called his alleged enemies frequently fascists in the latter part of the campaign. Now, we see unmistakable signs of a coming fascist state here in the United States of America.

The main characteristic of fascism is that all powers are in the hands of the leader. In this case only people totally loyal to Donald Trump, not to the U.S. Constitution, have been and will be appointed to and nominated for the highest positions in the administration.

Gaetz, Gabbard, und Hegseth pass this loyalty test with flying colors. The normal qualifications for such positions, namely, expertise, integrity, and independence are completely irrelevant in a fascist regime and thus, now, for Trump and the enablers around him.

Therefore, it does not matter whether the GOP Senators reject one or more of Trump’s nominees. Whoever is not confirmed, will be replaced by another Trump loyalist, who will be equally eager follow Trump’s wishes.     

Fascist leaders leave the legislative and judicial branches in place but do away with the check-and-balance system in which the branches share power. Trump has a compliant Supreme Court in place. The other day, he signaled that he also wants an impotent congress. He demanded that the GOP majority leader in the U.S. Senate must order a recess of the upper chamber which would eliminate the confirmation process altogether in a violation of the “consent and advice” role of the Senate.  

Fascist leaders do not accept term limits. They want to be leaders for life. Yesterday, Trump told GOP members in the House of Representatives, “I suspect I won’t be running again—unless you do something. Unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we have to just figure it out.’” Contrary to some reports, this was no joke. Rather, Trump launched a trial balloon that he will eventually follow up with a push to getting rid of the two-term limit.

Less than two weeks after Trump’s election victory and more than two months before his inauguration, the strongman is rapidly consolidating his power.

Once he gets back into the White House, he will be ready and able to implement his extremist policies.   

The Paradox of Donald Trump’s Victory Makers

By Brigitte L. Nacos

A few days after Donald Trump moved into the White House in January 2017, he signed an executive order that prohibited citizens of Muslim majority countries to enter the United States. He frequently called Muslims and Arabs at home and abroad terrorists. Yet, before Election Day, two Muslim and Arab leaders in Michigan endorsed Trump. One of them called the GOP candidate “a man of peace.” In Dearborn, where 55 percent of residents are of Middle Eastern descent, and in neighboring Dearborn Heights, where more of a third of citizens are Muslims and/or Arabs, Trump beat Kamala Harris handily. Most of these Trump voters are upset about President Biden’s support of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon. But if they believe that Trump will be more helpful to Palestinians and the Lebanese population, they are mistaken. Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s “historic victory” knowing that his strongman colleague will not interfere with his controversial policies.

Exit polls revealed on Election Day that 54 percent of voters had an unfavorable view of Donald Trump and 55% considered his views “too extreme.” Yet, Trump won the national popular vote along with the winning Electoral College votes. In other words, although a majority of voters had very negative views of Trump, enough of them voted for him.

Given Trump’s starring role in the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the horrific consequences of draconian anti-abortion laws in a bunch of states, it was no surprise, when opinion polls suggested that a sizeable majority of well educated, white suburban women, especially Independents, would vote for Harris this time around. It did not happen. Harris won merely 54 percent of the women’s vote nation-wide. It was not enough. In Montana and Missouri abortion rights amendments passed with strong female support. But ironically, many of the same female voters ignored the threat of a national ban of abortions under the coming Trump presidency, when they cast their votes for the GOP candidate.

Since he entered the political arena in 2015, Donald Trump has called Latinos criminals, rapists, animals, and carriers of diseases and bad genes. Yet, 54 percent of Latino men voted for the former president compared to 44 percent for Harris. In 2020, Joe Biden received 59 percent and Donald Trump 36 percent of the male Latino vote. In some states, namely Pennsylvania and Michigan, the Latino share of the vote might have contributed to Trump’s victory.

In sharp contrast to many other countries, America is still not ready to elect a woman president. This time, voters picked the same narcissist for the second time, while rejecting his highly qualified female competitor.

Trump will Do What’s Best for Women, Whether They Like it or Not.

By Brigitte L. Nacos

At a campaign stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Donald Trump told America’s women that he would protect them, “whether the women like it or not.” He also revealed that his aides told him, not to make the remark and that he told them, "I said, 'Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them.”

What the former president and once-again candidate for the highest office in the land, said, is a metaphor for his life-long patronizing attitude towards and sexual aggression against women.

He has sold himself forever as the best and the brightest, the toughest and the most successful, the best-looking alpha male who gets what he wants. Whatever it takes.    

In private life, in business, and in politics.

While misogynist Trump has attracted far more male than female hard-core supporters, a significant segment of white women is also loyal to him and his cult.

But in the 2022 mid-term elections and abortion referenda in several states, a significant number of conservative women voted with Democrats.  

Earlier this week, I was convinced that the opposition to Row v. Wade among those Republican women had declined. I assumed that many of them had returned to the fold.   

Now, I wonder whether “Trump being Trump” went too far with his chauvinist declaration of patriarchic Trumpian suppression of women’s agency.

At earlier campaign rallies, he insisted that he is the “protector of women” and wanted to take their minds away from “thinking about abortion.”

Now, all American women, including conservative ones, know how the Trumpian wind blows against all aspects of gender equality.

Perhaps, Trump’s latest macho bullet will ricochet back to marking his defeat thanks to women who are changing their voting decisions in these last days before Election Day…