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The rebels saw the chance and seized the day.
Now the HTS movement — Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — is in charge, though the situation remains fluid.
At 42, Ahmed Al-Shara, their leader (nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), seems a pretty well composed person.
I saw an interview of his and his physical appearance reminded me of Fidel Castro, when he rose to power on January 1st 1959. And how did we bungle that one!
Castro came to the US shortly afterwards but Eisenhower wouldn’t meet with him, instead delegating to Nixon, his vicepresident. Nothing came of it except bad feelings.
Castro was 33 years old. Whatever his thoughts at the time, an intelligent intervention on our part could’ve been inspiring and made a big difference. But our thinking wasn’t progressive. We were still living with racial segregation in our land, i.e. white is better than black or brown, and had trouble imagining Latin America could be anything other than our backyard.
But back to Syria. There are big opportunities there now for lasting peace in the region and that ought to include restoring Syria’s original boundaries.
Mr al-Shara was once affiliated with Al Qaeda but that was a while back and the cries of his warriors now speak of freeing their country from Iranians and Russians.
Let us listen to that. I suspect that the victorious movement wants something better than a partitioned nation, a nation that has been brutalized for…