Syria Has Fallen
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Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus, enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees and terms apply. What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith. He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein. How are you doing, sir? I'm excited for this Al-Qaeda comeback for the end of the Biden presidency. Oh, man, you really like it.

Yeah, life comes at you fast. You can't get a... I mean, there's just always some crazy story. This one, I guess, yeah, we could just get right into it. I assumed we were going to talk about that at some point. Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, I mean, this is probably going to be the whole episode because it's just... You know, for people who know, if you've followed me for a long time, Syria has been a pretty...

It's been a big focus of mine for quite a while. Um, you know, when I, when I worked, uh, for SE cup over at, um, at, uh, CNN, that was like one of the main issues we'd always like argue about. That was like my first like viral internet clips were back in 2017 when they were trying to drag us back into this conflict and arguing against it back then. And, um,

It's been a major theme of the show for years that I've talked about how much I think Syria was really at the heart of what turned the entire U.S. establishment both against Donald Trump and against Vladimir Putin. You know, like that was the real thing that made both of those guys like toxic, must be stopped by the regime. And, you know, this is a regime change that the U.S. has been flirting with for quite a long time.

And it's wild to see it finally happen. This did feel like the one who got away from the US empire for a little while there. And finally they get their man because that is what they tend to do. We did, I apologize for people because we did, we talked a bit about this on our members only episode on Thursday. And it came up because the rebels, I think at that point had taken Aleppo. And so...

It was like, I think, maybe a listener question or we were talking about it a bit. I did not think that was on Thursday. We're recording this on Sunday night. I did not think that by Sunday the regime would have fallen. Bashar al-Assad would be missing, dead, who knows, out of the country, and that you would literally see al-Jalini in Damascus leading the celebration.

It's really just wild. Did you see his wonderful video?

I saw it linked somewhere and I think maybe I clicked on it, but I didn't fully register what happened. It is just so surprising to me. I forgot. I didn't think that there was still civil war over there anymore. I guess I forgot about the storyline, but after all that fighting, the fact that it had been two or three days, Assad's just gone and it's a complete regime change. And you got some guy who had attachments to the Taliban at some point in time. And now I was talking about how diversity is their strength and,

Sure sounds like CIA talk to me. It was – Jalini was – he was an al-Qaeda member, a high-ranking al-Qaeda member for years. He was the emir to al-Qaeda in Syria. But then the CIA, I guess, restaffed him to something else that they call him to be slightly more moderate. Right. But this dude – and by the way, he's on –

I think there was some interview where he was bragging about his time in Fallujah. Like he was, he was bragging about being the Al Qaeda in Iraq who were fighting our boys over in Iraq that I guess didn't matter after they, they left her then. And he did like,

break away from al-Qaeda at one point like he had you know if you follow like the al-Qaeda and ISIS it's there's a lot of uh it's like kind of it's like terrorist bad girls club like there's falling outs and people start fighting and you know whatever but I mean this dude was like a real deal al-Qaeda monster and right now the west is on the side of that guy

taking over Syria. It's like unbelievable. It's an unbelievable history. The whole war in Syria, it is in many ways of all the terror wars, the most infuriating, the most nakedly, transparently corrupt and sold off lies. And the one in many ways that I think like

eat as bad as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan were. There's something about the war in Syria where you go like, wait a minute, you're going to turn around and support the Al Qaeda guys now? The U.S. is on the side of Al Qaeda? And why? Why would that be? And maybe we'll get into that a little bit on the show today. But it is, I mean, I guess,

and just start by saying, this is, you know, kind of take note of the people who are like celebrating this now, or at least, you know,

making excuses for why this is overall a good thing this is going to be a disaster Assad falling is going to be a disaster for Syria this is going to be every bit as bad as Libya maybe worse than that it's just there I mean and look obviously no one knows exactly what's going to happen in the future and some crazy miracle could happen but this is this is bad I mean you've got

The Al Qaeda rebels taking over Damascus, who could possibly think this is an improvement over Bashar al-Assad other than someone so brainwashed by D.C. or Israeli propaganda? I don't know who could possibly look at this and be like, oh, yeah, this is a positive.

Well, I wonder if you want to remove the morality from it and just try and understand strategic interests, because sometimes it seems like the war machine is just looking to print its own money and there is no strategic interest whatsoever. And they just want to, you know, whatever wars they can have for as long as they can, they can do them so that they can print the bond, you know, print money, pay themselves for bombs, drop the bombs and just keep printing the money.

So there's no strategic interest in doing that other than a couple basic American oligarchs can make their cash. Now, this one's interesting because the Ukraine war appeared to be that this entire time, except for maybe, you know, wanting to take out the pipeline so that Germany couldn't trade with Russia. But it seemed like we did not care that a bunch of people were going to die. We wanted to spend money on having a war. Now, with Syria falling because maybe Putin was otherwise preoccupied,

I wonder, like, is that some sort of a strategic forget the morality? Is there any strategic win there? Is it just chaos in the Middle East? So Israel feels more protected. Does it just spook Iran a little bit of, hey, on a long enough timeline, we can take out regimes. Is that port or oil access an actual story? I just wish they would actually tell me what the geopolitics of of Israel.

what the geopolitics actually is, so at least I can wave my head around, all right, I understand why you're doing that, and it's not just a bunch of gun manufacturers need more money. Yeah, well, I don't think it's that in this case, actually. It's the fact that this has been, look, this has been a long-running goal of Trump

the war hawks in DC and the war hawks in Israel. This has been a long standing goal of them has been to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And there's several reasons why that is. And we, we will get into all of those, but I do just want to just, just to kind of like go through a very little bit of the history of this, because I think it's again, like what I, I always say on these topics is,

That like, I'm not the expert on any of this. I'm not like the guy who's like the scholar on Syria who's got like, I have volumes of textbooks that I've written on this. Like, I'm not that guy and I'm not trying to pretend to be that guy. But I do know enough about this shit to just totally shatter the narrative of the Warhawks.

Like just to totally show you that, like what they're claiming is complete bullshit and totally based on propaganda lies. None of it tied to reality. And I do think the, the best place to start on this is with, uh, by the way, this was just in my mind because evidently, so we're, we're recording, I'm going on vacation with the family this week. So our schedule is going to be a little bit messed up, but I'm,

we're pre-recording this episode, which we don't typically do. So it's Sunday night right now. Um, we're tomorrow, uh, Scott Horton is doing a one-on-one debate on Pierce Morgan with, uh, general Wesley Clark, which is really fascinating. And I can't wait to see that. And, um, part of the reason why I can't wait to see that is because general Wesley Clark isn't just like a four-star general. He's a particularly interesting one. Um, and, um,

I'm not sure how it's going to go with him. Like, I don't know what his response to this will be from what I know of Wesley Clark. He is most famously, and I'm going to play the clip in a second, just cause he was on my mind and it relates to Syria. But he, he's, I think most famous in like internet, like,

circles for his seven countries in five years famous quote. But this is a dude who's a legit four-star general and has a very decorated career. After that quote, you know, this was the way I've always thought of him. And I don't know, I'll be interested to see what he's like when he's with Scott Horton. But the way I've always thought

So he when he said that it was on Democracy Now, we're about to play this clip. This is on Democracy Now in in the George W. Bush years. And back then for a guy who was like a Democrat, I mean, you know, he worked under William Perry for Bill Clinton, for people who are more like Democrats.

It was all the rage at the time to trash Bush and Cheney. Like for people who are younger, maybe you don't remember that, but that was like what the cool kids were doing. Jon Stewart and the Democrats, and back then they were kind of the ones who were seen as cool or whatever. That was the thing to do. But during Obama, he would defend all of the wars and just repeat the propaganda, even though what he had said here beforehand was—

if not completely shattered the propaganda, at least threw it into doubt. But anyway, let's go back to the famous General Wesley Clark moment on Democracy Now with Amy Goodwin. Always a really fascinating lens to view a lot of these foreign conflicts through. So let's play that one, Natalie. Ten days after 9-11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and

and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me. And one of the generals called me in. He said, sir, you got to come in and talk to me a second. I said, well, you're too busy. He said, no, no. He says, we've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq. This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, we're going to war with Iraq? Why? He said, I don't know. He said, I guess they don't know what else to do.

So I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda? He said, no, no. He says, there's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq. He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments. And he said, I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.

So I came back to see him a few weeks later.

Those of you guys who don't remember, we invaded Iraq in 2003, and it was after a year-plus long campaign of this war propaganda about how they had weapons of mass destruction and were involved in September 11th. And here he is, the four-star general telling you that actually they were just lying about that.

They never had any of that. They had already made the decision that they were going to go in. And it was just kind of, we went in knowing they didn't have anything to do with 9-11, but just being like, I don't know, we got a military, I guess we got to go smash someone. So we just went and smashed a country that had nothing to do with it. Knowingly. Not got it wrong. Not were mistaken. And oh my God, made a horrible, tragic mistake where a million people died. Straight up like, no, we are consciously deciding to do this.

knowing that this is not the country that attacked us. That alone right there would be a wild thing for a four-star general to admit. Fair enough, Rob? And wildly casual, just the, gee jolly gee, we got a military, might as well invade something.

She goes, so you know this organization I've been a part of my entire life. Now, I know you fine people have the attitude that these are some type of heroes out there defending liberty and freedom and all of that. But actually, we're a group of hired killers, and we're happy to go kill for sport. And that's just about how that works. And we just picked on the globe. Iraq looked like a nice spot to go invade. Yeah. There you go. So, I mean, it's a wild admission from, again, a four-star general. Okay. But now let's keep playing because the second part tops that.

And by that time, we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, are we still going to war with Iraq? And he said, oh, it's worse than that. He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, I just got this down from upstairs, meaning the Secretary of Defense's office today. And he said, this is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.

I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo. I didn't show it to you." I'm sorry, what did you say his name was? I'm not going to give you his name. So go through the countries again? All right, so anyway, so there's the, that's the clip.

Again, it's just wild. Even the way they just joke about casually like sharing classified material is kind of something. But the fact that he just – OK, so on this list of countries, you have Libya and Syria and Somalia, right? And it's supposed to finish off with Iran. Now, to be clear, this did not happen.

they did, the neocons did not get seven regime changes in, in five years. They got, uh, two in, in the next five years. And then in the years following that, they got what, um,

They got Libya. They got Yemen. They got Somalia. They got... So, you know, they were like a little bit short. And Syria was the big one that failed. And obviously Iran has not happened yet either. However, one of the things that's so interesting about this, right, is it just shows you that... So I think it was 2010, 2011, when we overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in Libya...

When we did that, we had a whole lie about why we were doing it. They said he was about to go genocidal and he was planning on killing all his own people. So we had to launch this like U.S. NATO humanitarian mission and overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.

And then in 2011, 2012, 2013, when the effort to overthrow Bashar al-Assad was on, they said it was because he was gassing his own people. And we are right. But you're like, as soon as you've seen this clip, you're like, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on. Don't give me that bullshit. You had plans to overthrow these guys a decade before what you're talking about happened. Right. Like it.

If you have plans to overthrow Bashar al-Assad a decade before the crime you say he committed, which is the reason you have to overthrow him, that at least calls your reason into suspicion. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, maybe you're lying to me. Maybe this was actually your plan all along. So then that would kind of lead you to the question of like, why exactly do you

Why does the US government and the Israeli government and the Turkish government, why do they want to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, especially when on the other side of it is a fucking Al-Qaeda leader? Like, why is it that they want to overthrow this guy? If it's not the excuse that they made up all these years later, why is it? And I mean, the reason is because they're Israel's enemy.

That's really the main reason. And Israel has a bunch of problems with Syria. This is why I don't know if you've, as you've probably read in a few newspapers, Rob, Israel regularly bombs Syria. I mean, with impunity, they've been doing it for years and years and years. They've stepped it up over the last year. But they have land disputes with Syria. One of their major issues is that the weapons flow

through Syria, it's kind of whatever. I think they call it the Shiite Crescent or something like that. But it's like, if you could picture, you know, the Middle East, like the map of the Middle East in your head, right? If you think like where there's, okay, there's like,

Okay, Egypt is the last country in Africa on the northeast of Africa there. Right next to that is Israel. Right above them is Lebanon to the northeast. And then you have the Syrian-Dukie lines. That's right. You've got the Syria...

And then Iran, you know, and so if you like the weapons are flowing through Syria and it's a Shiite controlled countries, that's allies with Iran. And so you if you have Al Qaeda running that shit instead, you're

You're going to have a much tougher time, you know, fucking now, now Iran has to move weapons through the territory of their deadliest enemies. And so that's, they see to think that that's in their benefit. There's also been several very bizarre comments that have come out of a bunch of the Syrian rebel groups about how they're like kind of friendly with Israel and they don't want any problems with Israel. And it does, I will say it, it remains to be seen exactly how,

what the level of U.S. involvement in this moment right now is. You know, with all these things, especially with wars, but it's true with things in general, but oftentimes we learn more about what's going on as time goes on, you know,

Julian Assange has some dump of records of classified documents about war crimes that were committed in 2004, but you don't find out about it until 2009 or something like that. And then we go, oh, this is what was going on back then. We know now that the U.S. was...

heavily, heavily involved from at least 2012 through 2017, straight up arming Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, knowingly doing it, fighting on their sides. Now, this all stopped in 2017 when one of the best things that Donald Trump did was he ended immediately

He ended the CIA program of backing the anti-Assad rebels, that this was his plan. He was like, no, we're just going to – then he bombed ISIS targets, wanted to take them out. Russia certainly bombed – and Assad and all of them, they bombed a whole bunch of ISIS targets. And then essentially the thing's been at kind of a quiet –

stalemate, not exactly a stalemate. I mean, Assad pretty much won. I believe there was like one area where there were Al Qaeda fighters and that's basically been the what's the status quo from 2017 to now. And now all of a sudden they've taken the entire country.

I don't we don't have all of these details yet, but we certainly know already from solid reporting that the U.S. is involved. There's been U.S. strikes like while this uprising has happened. Turkey's involved. Israel's involved. Like all of these countries are involved. We don't know exactly the extent of it. But my guess, Rob, is.

A fairly educated one, although I admit I'm speculating to some degree here. But my educated guess is that it's going to come out that the U.S. is heavily involved in it.

in this move. I think this is another DC regime change operation.

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Mike, just from the hip guess, it's the first day of news on this is same thing. And it might even just go back to at some point in time, like you like to say, arming the rebels. But my guess is that at a minimum, we armed and trained this guy at some point or armed and trained somebody that then teamed up with this guy. But just a clarification question, the bombing, was that while this was going on or afterwards? I thought it was a foreshadowing.

free pass afterwards to Assad had fallen, hey, we might as well remove some of these strategic assets. Yeah. Okay. So there was, it seems like there was reporting that there was some of both, right? So there was, Israel claims that they were going after his chemical weapons so that they don't fall into the wrong hands. You know what I mean? With these rebel groups, that's their claim. Who

Who knows? But there were reports out there that America was doing bombing of like Assad reinforcement groups that were trying to come and fight in the thing. Again, I don't know. You know what I mean? Like if that's like 100 percent verified or not, we will see. As I said, my guess is that there was heavy involvement. And again,

Just to be clear, to your point where it's like, well, maybe this guy or some of his guys had gotten U.S. weapons in the past or something like that. That's 100 percent. Like, that's not even a maybe. That is 100 percent is true. This was the resistance force that was driving around in Toyota trucks and with U.S. weapons. Like, this is 100 percent. I saw footage of the military just, I guess, or they were claiming that the military put on plain clothes and basically just walked off.

So that's what I kind of find to be the most surprising is that for years there was an uprising in the area and Assad was a brutal dictator and he kept...

all of the efforts at bay as to how within three days i guess he didn't even have a security that means some people on on the inner circle must have turned on him that's just that's what that kind of sounds like it seems so i mean i don't you know we'll get more information about that as time comes out it goes on it's i i guess his force is weakened or perhaps like you said people turned on him i mean look it's also there's no question that you know

Hezbollah and Russia really had Assad's back in that civil war. And those guys are just not in a position to do the same thing right now. They both have a big mess on their hands. And, you know, that I think is certainly...

is clearly part of this. And like part of this is the dynamic that, okay, has it now, of course, from the Israeli perspective, they'll spin that as because we see, because we're taking this fight to Hezbollah in Lebanon, that's why this was able to happen. Of course, that's in a weird way, presuming this is a positive thing. And this is great that this happened, which is, you know, let's just say debatable. Yeah.

It's unlikely great for the Syrian people, but I guess that's also a preemptive shoot from the hip. But I guess when have we seen rebels take over any of these areas and then it worked out better for the people living there? Yeah. Yeah. Or even the people in Israel or the people... I mean, like, when does it even not backfire on everybody? I mean, again, you know, this is like... It's like basic, like, public choice theory shit, but, like, it's not... You know, the...

actors in government are human beings too, and they are driven by their own incentives. And a lot of times these decisions are not what's best in their nation's best interest. It's what's in their own best interest. Not even always the best interest of the government. It might just be in the best interest of the individual political actors who are making this decision. And that doesn't even mean that they'll be correct in their assessment that this is in their best interest. But I

I don't know. I mean, I can't believe some of the, you know, like I was listening to Dave DeCamp on some show about this, or maybe it was in one of his articles about it, but he was talking about the Kurds who, you know, have had their fair share of beefs with Assad, but that they're like, we're helping the Al Qaeda guys. And you're just sitting there and you're just like, really? You guys are willing to take that risk? Like these guys have been slaughtering Kurds.

in in iraq and in syria and you're like really you guys are gonna you want them in charge and you're just kind of banking on that seems a little short-sighted to me and the same with the israelis like you're not concerned about a nation but like whatever problems you have with bashar al-assad he was you know as scott likes to say he was like a dictator who wore a three-piece suit and shaved his chin every morning you know what i mean he wasn't like a

like head chopping off jihadist. And like you would think you'd be, you might be a little bit concerned about that being next door to you, but I guess not. Anyway, by the way, here was Benjamin Netanyahu's response to the collapse of the Syrian regime. Let's bring that one up if we can. - This is a historic day for the Middle East. The collapse of the Assad regime,

The tyranny in Damascus offers great opportunity, but also is fraught with significant dangers. This collapse is a direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah in Iran, Assad's main supporters. It set off a chain reaction of all those who want to free themselves from this tyranny and its oppression. But it also means we have to take action against possible threats.

One of them is the collapse of the separation of forces agreement from 1974 between Israel and Syria. This agreement held for 50 years. Last night it collapsed. The Syrian army abandoned its positions. We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel. This is a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found.

Equally, we send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria, to the Jews, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel.

We're going to follow events very carefully. If we can establish neighborly relations and a peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that's our desire. But if we do not, we'll do whatever it takes to defend the state of Israel and the border of Israel.

So there's Benjamin Netanyahu. A Jew with an opportunity for a land grab. Yep. I mean, literally cannot hide the smile on his face. It's actually like he looks like he's trying to not smile and the smile is piercing through as he takes credit for, you know, leading to this opportunity for, you know, it's unbelievable that after the regime changes all throughout this region,

that anybody at this point, and particularly with the dynamics in Syria, like, I don't know, like Libya might be a close comparison to it, but with the dynamics where the rebel groups are so clearly these like Islamic butchers,

And to sit there and go like to characterize the move against a dictator as the aspirations of freedom of the people and all this stuff and not just like...

Dude, come on. I mean, and then, yes, of course, a temporary, a very temporary, just like how they temporarily occupied Palestine in 1967. They're temporarily going to take some land. I mean, why not? You know, seems like a perfect opportunity to do that. It's so you already see the, you know, just the the.

Who benefits from this? Who's happy about this? And fine. Like, whatever. I mean, it's not fine. But if those are your enemies, Netanyahu, if those are Israel's enemies, fine. But let's just be honest about it. Let's be honest about this. This is what's so clear-cut about it. And I know, look, there are people who...

Whenever they want to criticize you for this, there'll always be people who go, oh, so you're blaming the Jews, Dave. You always find a way to blame the Jews. And this is always the defense of the pro-Israel crowd. Interestingly enough, as anyone who's probably noticed, is paying attention, has probably noticed over the last year at least, if not longer than that, the only people who

who seem to agree that if you blame Benjamin Netanyahu, this is some comment on the Jews, are the pro-Israeli people and the Jew haters. Those are the only ones who seem to agree that you're implying all Jews somehow when you talk about this stuff. But look, if you remember, if you guys can recall back maybe a month or two ago,

When we did, we did a segment on the show. I think you might have been out this episode, Rob, but we did a segment on the show on Ted Cruz's Senate race. And Ted Cruz, it was, we played a clip of the debate in his Senate race. And I was...

I found it fascinating and I was, you know, making fun of it. But there's, uh, there, there was this portion that we were playing where Ted Cruz is like, this guy doesn't love Israel. And I'll tell you, this guy didn't vote for all the funding for Israel that I voted for Israel. I stand with Israel. Let me tell you that. And then he throws it over to the Democrat. And one of the things I was making fun of is you would think like, here's a Democrat, right? And you got, uh,

Democratic voters, like, you know, 50% of them consider what Israel's doing a genocide. High 70s percentage of them want to ceasefire there. Like your voting base is not for what Israel's doing right now. And wouldn't it just be so easy for you to sit there and go, oh, yeah.

What do you mean I don't love Israel? I'm a Texan. I'm an American. What are you even talking about? Yeah, I don't like what Israel's doing right now. And why are you insisting I have loyalty to stuff? I thought you were America first, sir. Why are you, you know, like just destroy him.

But instead, his response is, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. No, I love Israel way more than this guy loves Israel. And in fact, I voted for Israel funding that this guy didn't vote for. And then Ted Cruz is like, that was a bad bill. It had other bad things in it. And he's like, well, you didn't give Israel the – and then they're just competing over who can love Israel more. And I'm just pointing out that you don't have to –

hate Jews or be a conspiracy theorist or anything like that to just look at that and go, "What's going on here? This is bizarre. What the hell is this?" If this was any other country, this would be really weird. If they just got up there and had a, like, "Who loves France" off in the middle of fucking a political debate in America, that'd be weird.

Anyone would be like, why are you even talking about friends? And like, yeah, there are allies and shit. Like, you know, like they're a Western European country and like we're not going to war with them anytime soon. And our countries have a very intertwined past. And OK, we're friends.

People from there like to vacation here, people from here like to vacation there, we trade with each other, okay? But if they were just having a competition of like, you don't love the French as much as I do, and I support France, and you don't support France. No, no, no, I support France. That'd be pretty weird. That'd be pretty weird. Okay, so what's going on here? And if you look at Syria, and you just look at the dynamics here, okay, you have Bashar al-Assad

Who is a dictator in a three piece suit with a shaved beard, who, by the way, was, you know, you can go look at old pictures of John Kerry and him having dinner together and stuff like that, like was, you know, in power for a long time. His father was in power for a long time, a somewhat stable leader, like whatever the issue is, he's no threat to us.

he has no he has no beef with america he's not an american enemy he poses no threat to america we don't care about weapons going from iran to lebanon like we that's not an american problem that's a problem halfway around the world okay you've got a guy who literally is such a weak leader that israel can bomb him with impunity and he can't do about it he just has to accept that that's part of life

is that Israel gets to bomb us whenever they want to. That's who that guy is, okay? That's the position. He doesn't have nuclear weapons. He doesn't have an air force that could hit us. They have nothing, okay? And then on the other side, you have Al-Qaeda, the actual enemy of the American people. Why is America choosing Al-Qaeda over Bashar al-Assad?

It just makes no sense. And it's like, why we are prioritizing the enemy of Israel over the enemy of the American people. This is bonkers. Like, I don't get, I don't care what it seems to me that no matter what your politics are, you should oppose that. Whether you're left wing or right wing, whatever you are, you should oppose that. The only politics that makes sense to support that is corrupt politics. You're just, oh, you're a liar.

You won't even admit it. Well, you know what? I think Ben Shapiro comes kind of close. I think Ben Shapiro actually does come close to admitting it. So let's let this was Ben Shapiro's response to Syria falling. Let's let's take a look at that. And there are significant human right predations against Christians on the ground, not only in the areas controlled by Sunni terrorists, but also in the areas that were controlled by terrorists. Syria is about 10 percent Christian. So is it about to get worse? It definitely could, which would, of course, be a terrible thing.

And then you have the question of what Bashar al-Assad was doing to the country, which is killing hundreds of thousands of people, using everything up to and including chemical weapons. Well, he's gone now. All right. Just pause that for a second. He's striking a lot of the chemical weapons depots to prevent that. Let me pause it right there. So, like, look, just again, and this is what happens when I know this happened to, like, Tulsi Gabbard and other people. What was that hat?

Zach Barry Weiss called her an Assad toady or something like that. But you're like, the response, you can already hear them saying it. It's like, oh, if you criticize Israel, you hate the Jews. If you criticize the war in Ukraine, you're spewing Russian propaganda. And so then here they'll be, if you ever like correct the record, they'll just be like, oh, so you love Bashar al-Assad, which is of course, right? Like we're...

Jewish libertarian New York comedians. And so obviously both me and Rob are sworn loyal to Bashar al-Assad, of course. I like dictators with a stronger chin. I'd like to come out on the record and say that. Not a very strong chin. Now that's a fair criticism of Assad. But so when he says Assad started a civil war and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people, I mean, that's just not right. It's just not true. And, you know,

Again, people even, you know, however you feel about the Civil War, it's like most people, most mainstream historians, in fact, I'll say no mainstream historians are ever going to say Abraham Lincoln slaughtered 600,000 Americans.

You know, it's like, no, there was a civil war and this is the number of people that died. Okay. So that's like the number one, it's just very misleading. When you say he slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people, it makes it sound like he is like had death camps or something like that. But, but on top of that, it's like, no, America and Israel started a civil war in Syria. Okay. And that's, again, I'm not downplaying that Assad, uh,

prosecuted that war with severe brutality. I mean, severe brutality. But

Like, come on. Let's be real about what happened there. Operation Timber Sycamore. Obama and John Brennan, with the help of the Israeli and Turkish governments, and I believe the Saudis as well, they launched an operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And they did it by funding the jihadists that the American invasion of Iraq had drawn into the region.

And so like, yes, in that context, after, after Muammar Gaddafi is dragged out of his, you know, after they funded or after they backed the jihadists in Libya, and then Gaddafi is dragged out of his palace and sodomized to death by a gang of fucking radical Islamists.

Bashar al-Assad, when faced with the same thing, brutally conducted the war and ultimately

put down the resistance and then as you know, that ultimately fell years later. But to just look back at him be like, oh, he's this guy, you know, it's just Ben Shapiro doing Ben Shapiro history. And that's there's much more to the story than that. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Small Batch Cigar. We love this company. If you or anyone you know is a cigar enthusiast, you got to check out Small Batch. It's the holidays.

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and use the promo code problem that will get you 10% off plus you get those 5% rewards points so small batch cigar calm promo code problem for 10% off all right let's get back into the show so anyway let's keep playing well he's gone now and Israel has been striking a lot of the chemical weapons depots to prevent them from falling into the hands of the new rebel alliance over here okay so

Again, is any of this wonderful? It isn't. But the one thing that is an upside is that the Iranian crescent is dead. The Shia crescent that, again, stretched all the way from Iran all the way across to Lebanon, that is now dead. What does that mean? It means that the Iranian regime is actually in quite real trouble here. All of their biggest proxies are gone. Hamas, gone. Hezbollah, gone. Assad, gone. It means the Shia influence game is gone.

I mean, like, listen, dude, could you just say Israel's enemies are hurt? Like, could you just say Israel's position is strengthened without saying it? Like, what are we talking about here? The Shiite Fertile Crescent from Iran to Syria to Lebanon. Yeah, that sure sounds like a problem for the middle part of North America, doesn't it, Rob? Doesn't that sure sound like a major issue for Connecticut that the Shiite Crescent has been weakened?

Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, I don't know what to say. It's just like, it's unbelievable that even you could admit this and not just go like, okay, but then like, let's get real here.

This is this you're you're happy about this, even though you acknowledge things might get much worse because you think this is in Israel's interest. And like, OK, but I just think if you're going to put yourself out there as this American conservative, you should really like disclose that, that that's what you care about.

I don't think that's unreasonable. Like, I would say that about anybody if they had an interest that was if an interest in a foreign country so clearly superseded their interest in our country. I would just think that would be an obvious thing to call out from anyone. All right. Let's keep playing.

is beginning to wane. It's beginning to end. The Houthis are basically isolated down there in Yemen. The Shia regime in Iran still has impact in Iraq, but internally they are much, much, much weaker right now. So the border countries, what are they doing? Turkey is incursion, is doing incursions into Northern Syria.

They were probably behind much of what's going on right now. They're attempting to grab territory in northern Syria. They're creating their own buffer zone. They're attempting to encroach on Kurdish territory, again, in the northeast of the country. Meanwhile, Israel in the south has the Golan Heights. And anybody, by the way, who thought that it was a good idea for Israel to give up the Golan Heights, yeah, you're an idiot. It's a good thing Israel has the Golan Heights. Otherwise, you'd have Sunni terrorists sitting up top over the Lake Tiberias and firing down into the valley,

in Israel. Israel controls that area. They've been... Pause it here. I'm sorry, man. This argument's just too wild to make. I mean, Israel had to hold on to the Golan Heights because otherwise, dude, these Sunni terrorists could have taken it over. Well, yeah, but not if you didn't help them overthrow the government. That's the whole point, dude. The whole point is that you were backing this Sunni terrorist uprising for years. Even if...

Even not knowing the details exactly of how much you're helping them right now. The fact is, as you mentioned earlier, Rob, that you were assisting this for years and Ben Shapiro, you were all for it. So like what, what a crazy thing to, to say, you know, I, it's, it's literally on the level of like, if I took your wallet and,

And you were like, hey, you should give my wallet back. That's mine. It doesn't belong to you. And then I beat the shit out of you till you're in a bloody pulp. And I went, well, look, your wallet would have been all bloody now. So fucking aren't you glad? Aren't you glad? Yeah, you guys who were saying give back that wallet. Don't you look like a bunch of dopes right now? It's all perfectly clean, but it would have been bloody. Like what? What an argument. Let's keep playing.

This might not be particularly helpful for this conversation, but I'd really like to stick Velcro onto his eyebrows. It is. Yeah, that's going to derail me for a while. Does it not look like you can, like a little kid's shoe, you could just slap it right on the other end, stick anything onto his face? It looks like you made his eyebrows with like sand and a magnet or something like that. All right, let's keep playing.

moving up into their own buffer zone over at Mount Hermon, which is in Syria. It's kind of the strategic height of the region. And meanwhile, again, you have the Syrian government, which has now abdicated. They are turning over control to this rebel alliance. Unclear exactly what's going to result because, again, you still have all of these players on the ground who are fighting one another. They may be united against Assad, but now Assad is gone. So Assad's family is out. The rebels, again, arrived in Damascus.

Meanwhile, you have the Kurds who are still controlling a large swath of territory. What does it really mean? It means that Russia is weak. Iran is weak. These were paper tigers. And their attempts to invade Ukraine and invade Israel, respectively, those went really poorly for them. What you are watching is the complete collapse of the Russian-Iranian alliance in Syria. And it is indicative of the interior weakness of these countries, which is something to remember going forward.

President Biden said this is the first time ever either Russia nor Iran or Hezbollah could defend a foreign regime in Syria. This is the direct result of the blows Ukraine and Israel delivered, is what he said in a statement. No thanks to Joe Biden, by the way, who's continuing to slow walk weapons to both Ukraine and also to Israel. So if it had been up to Joe Biden, presumably,

Those allies never would have been properly armed. It's amazing. It's amazing the argument here. It's like identical to the argument that leftists, like economist types, used to make about Obama's stimulus package.

I remember it would be like Obama came in and we were still in the Great Recession after the George W. Bush years, and he'd be like, "We're going to have a big stimulus package. It's going to be like the biggest stimulus package in the history of stimulus packages, but we need it. It's got to be $800 billion." And all these progressive economists would say, "If you don't pass this stimulus package, unemployment is going to go over 10%. Unemployment will be over 10% if you don't pass this stimulus package."

And then they pass the stimulus package and then unemployment goes over 10%. And then they go, it should have been bigger. It should have been a bigger stimulus. That's the lesson of this. And you're like, oh yeah, it's easy to just say that. It's the same with the COVID shots, right?

Oh, well, you got to get a booster. You got to get another booster. The problem is you haven't gotten another booster yet. Oh, if our if our product doesn't do what we told you it was going to do, you need more of our product. It's like the same thing to criticize Obama for not giving. I mean, to criticize Biden, I should say, for not giving enough weapons to Ukraine and to Israel. That's really the problem with Joe Biden. He slow walked it too much.

just hasn't given them enough weapons, even though this is like complete bullshit. There is nobody, there is no actual military strategist with a shred of self-respect who's actually going to tell you at this point or any point really that if we just gave more weapons than the Ukrainians would have won.

Oh, they could totally push back the Russians with just a little bit more weapons. Or if there was just, if Israel just had some more bombs, they wouldn't have to deal with this, this terrorism problem that they have now. They wouldn't have to deal with people resenting their treatment of the Palestinians if they just had some more bombs. It is such, it's, it's actually madness, but it's just an unfalsifiable statement that is like, there's no reason to believe and every reason in the world to think is ridiculous.

So, all right, let's keep playing. A very good thing and indicative, again, of the weakness of Russia and Iran, what has happened in Syria. Now, net-net, I think it'll probably be a good thing, but there are no great things in the Middle East. It just doesn't exist. A lot of bad people in a lot of areas in the Middle East. Well, you know, one of the things that's very interesting is that

And look, I know I'll get shit for saying this the way I'm going to, but, you know, as Ben Shapiro mentioned at the beginning, there is a significant minority of Christians in Syria. And Bashar al-Assad has always been known for protecting the Christians. I don't know if you're familiar with how Al-Qaeda feels about the Christians, Rob, but they're not so big on protecting them.

They're a little bit more dogmatic in their belief in Islam. And so they are very seriously in jeopardy now. And even Ben Shapiro concedes at the beginning, like it might get worse for them. But, you know, that's just not really his number one priority, you know? And isn't it interesting that you could be such a conservative, like, figure in America? And it's just like, let's just say this, Rob. If 10% of Syria were Jews...

And Assad had always protected the Jews, let's say, or largely protected them. And now they were in jeopardy. I don't think Ben Shapiro would have the same attitude. I just really don't. I think like it would be like, oh, those people need to be protected. If this if this move put Israeli lives at more risk, he would be against this move.

That that's what I genuinely believe. And yet he's like, why is it exactly that Christians aren't supposed to feel that way about the Christians in Syria, which some of them do, but not that many is surprisingly, or maybe they just don't know. Anyway, there you have it. Ben Shapiro, while hiding behind a little bit of a, like, maybe this could go bad. He, he seemed to mention there, Rob, that there were like warring factions, like,

You know, and that is true. There's no question about that. Like there are a whole bunch of different factions involved in the anti-Assad rebel group. But like the guy leading the speech was the emir of Al Qaeda in Syria.

That might be an indication that this isn't just the hopes and aspirations of people for liberty, as Netanyahu, Ben Shapiro's boy, said there. There might be a little – Well, that's convenient because then they get to hold on to all that security territory. Yeah, well, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Very convenient. That temporary might just have to get extended a little bit more, right? Yeah.

And the argument, this is proof that they should have kept the goal on heights all these years. And it's just unbelievable. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Tax Network USA. Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled?

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Act now before the IRS takes more aggressive steps. Take control today. Visit TNUSA.com slash Smith or call 1-800-958-1000. All right, let's get back into the show. Look, man, if you want to have an honest conversation with the American people and you want to get up there and say to them, listen, listen,

The United States of America has been involved in war after war after war in the Middle East over the last 20 plus years. I think it's great that we did that. And I think we got to keep doing that. And we got to keep doing that because we have to help Israel. We have to help Israel take out all of their enemies in the region. If you want to say that and try to pitch the American people on that,

Then fine. I, you know, what can I say? I mean, I'll be against it, but like, I would at least respect that you were doing it. But what, what drives me crazy is that, you know, that would never work, right?

Like, you know, nobody could ever run on that and win on that. Nobody like the American people would never support that. And it's what you have here, especially for someone like Ben Shapiro, again, who puts himself out there as like the one of the thought leaders amongst conservatives in America. What happened is that Donald Trump, by the way, should mention this before we end the show, did make a long post, not that great of a post, but urged America to stay out of this.

You know, urgent America to not do this. And he was always, you know, at least he said, I mean, I know there were reports behind closed doors. He flirted with assassinating Assad, but he always said publicly that he did not want to overthrow Assad. And he did not want to be in the regime change business in the Middle East and that he just wanted to take out the Al Qaeda and ISIS guys. And that was the only thing we should be doing in the Middle East. And Donald Trump.

just won an election. And in this context, the Biden administration, I mean, it's just unbelievable, like the

What's going on in the war in Russia and now in Syria here, it does certainly seem like this is either an attempt to sabotage Trump or it's an understanding. I mean, this is one conflict that Tulsi Gabbard was really great on. And it just might be their understanding that with this new regime coming in, if we wanted to do something, we got to do it right now.

Like, we got to move now. And like, I don't know that that's true, but it does seem like there's a strong possibility of that. And if that is the case, how treasonous that is, you know, that in your lame duck session, this is the move that you're going to make when the American people just voted for somebody who doesn't want it. And Ben Shapiro, you're supposed to be on that side. And yet this is just your comment. We sure did break up that Shiite crescent, though.

Yeah, things might get a lot worse, but Israel got some more land. So I'm kind of for this, I guess. Even though, I mean, like if you could look at every single other one of these regime changes and every one of them ends in a disaster. And all you know about this regime change is that there's an Al Qaeda guy leading the charge. Would you look at that and go, no, it could go bad. There's a possibility, but it also could go good.

It also could go great. And really, Rob, isn't the lesson here that look how strong we are and look how weak all of them are. And so I guess we can just do that to them, right? That's the takeaway from it, which also is just like...

I mean, first off, it's stupid and beside the point. Like, I don't think anyone was ever arguing America is too weak to go overthrow regimes around the world or we're incapable of doing it. The point is that it's not in our interest. And there were U.S. servicemen who have been injured in the fighting over the last few days. I don't think anyone died. But, like, why is any of this in our interest? And also, I do just think that

You know, to look at any one thing like this and then go Ben Shapiro's lesson is that this shows that Russia and China and Iran and all of these threats are just weak and we can do whatever we want. You know, the same type of hubris that's got us into all these messes. I mean, dude, we just lost a fucking 20 year war in Afghanistan to the Taliban.

You really think that like this is such proof that we are so, you know, so ever powerful and awesome? I don't know. I don't see it that way. I think that like it showed a weakness in the Assad regime. Yes, there are guys who usually have their back were destroyed.

distracted with other issues. But the, if you want to lose whatever strength we have and turn it into weakness, take this lesson from that, which is that, Oh, we can get away with doing this. So no problem. I don't know. Any final thoughts, Rob?

I'm curious to see how this develops. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I'm curious to learn more about exactly what the forces were at work here, which I'm sure we will learn more about over the next coming months and years. All right. We're going to wrap up there. Catch you guys next time. Quick plug. I have December 19th, a new show in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and then December 21st in San Antonio, Texas. You can go to RobbieTheFire.com for all those links.

All right. Sounds good. And of course, comicdavesmith.com, I should mention. We're in 2025. We are going to be on the road the entire year. A whole lot of dates are up on the website and then some more coming as well. All right. Peace.