Speaker 1: Hmm, what's bomb in my neighborhoods filled with women in?
Speaker 1: This is not an intro. I should I should continue?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't How do you? How do
Speaker 1: you open part two of the episode on Bashar al
Speaker 1: Assad the greatest mass murder of the century? Not that way?
Speaker 1: That was clearly wrong, Uh, wildly wildly wrong. Never should
Speaker 1: have been attempted. Sophie is shaking her head at me,
Speaker 1: and oh damn, no, I thought you were going to
Speaker 1: be ashamed too, but you just doubled down. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a true friend who sees you digging
Speaker 1: your own grave and grabs a shovel and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's fucking make this whole bigger. It's a mark of friendship. Now.
Speaker 1: And you know, we had a lot of fun. No
Speaker 1: we didn't. Uh you're the co host of the Ethnically
Speaker 1: Ambiguous podcast, I am, and uh we're talking about Bashar
Speaker 1: al Assad. So my favorite um probably micro penis holder.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, if you added six inches to his dick,
Speaker 1: you'd still need tweezers to find it. It's probably non existent,
Speaker 1: which is why he's so angry. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: that's why he wanted to get his eyes. You know,
Speaker 1: he wanted to fix everyone's eyes so they could see
Speaker 1: his penis because he's being like to see it. So
Speaker 1: maybe I'll become an optometrist. Maybe someone will fucking see
Speaker 1: my penis everybody. I was going to go on this
Speaker 1: thing about how we shouldn't like demonize micro penis is,
Speaker 1: but then you made a really fucking good joke, and uh,
Speaker 1: we should have seized micro penis is because if you
Speaker 1: have one, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters the fact that
Speaker 1: you can still you can still come, and that's all
Speaker 1: that matters. You can still have child. And if you
Speaker 1: can't come, that that's fine too. Uh, we're getting way
Speaker 1: off the subject of Bashar al Assad here. Well, I
Speaker 1: feel like I'll only demonize it if you are someone
Speaker 1: like Bachar la saw who who takes it out on
Speaker 1: other people by murdering yeah yeah, children, Like I would
Speaker 1: never make fun of anyone for having a squeaky voice.
Speaker 1: But if you're like a little fascist media personality who
Speaker 1: argues about how all Muslims are monsters and you have
Speaker 1: a voice that sounds like you've been in haling helium
Speaker 1: for the last thirty years and your name is Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 1: I might make fun of that, like, hey, I'm popular,
Speaker 1: so anna. Uh do you know the name Mohammed Boiseiz No. Well,
Speaker 1: he was a twenty five year old man in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand ten. He worked as a street vendor
Speaker 1: in Tunisia. His father had died when he was young,
Speaker 1: and Mohammed wound up supporting his family through a very
Speaker 1: rough economy, even managing to pay for one of his
Speaker 1: sisters to attend university. He seems to have been a
Speaker 1: real stand up guy, dropped out of school, you know,
Speaker 1: put his own dreams on hold in order to take
Speaker 1: care of like several brothers and sisters and like a
Speaker 1: couple of elderly relatives. Uh. Now, for some reason, local
Speaker 1: police officers took a dislike to Mohammed. Uh. They regularly
Speaker 1: confiscated his wares, likely because he could not afford to
Speaker 1: bribe them not to do so. One day in mid
Speaker 1: December two thousand ten, this happened again, and Mohammed tried
Speaker 1: to seek redress through the organs of his local government.
Speaker 1: But Tunisia was a state ruled by an autocratic dictator
Speaker 1: and an ossified bureaucracy. That existed primarily to let people
Speaker 1: with family connections make money by fucking over poor folks
Speaker 1: like Mohammed Boisiz. His quest ended at the governor, who
Speaker 1: refused to talk to him, even after Mohammed said, if
Speaker 1: you don't see me, I'll burn myself. Mohammed immediately left
Speaker 1: to do just that. He acquired a can of gasoline
Speaker 1: from a nearby station and lit himself on fire in
Speaker 1: front of the governor's office. He died on January fourth,
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, after days of unspeakable agony. But in death,
Speaker 1: the governor and the dictator, a real president of Tunisia,
Speaker 1: could not ignore Mohammed Boisiz. His death is generally seen
Speaker 1: as having ignited the Arab Spring, which overthrew the president
Speaker 1: of Tunisia as well as the dictators of Egypt and Libya.
Speaker 1: For a time, Bashar al Assad thought he would be
Speaker 1: safe from the fires of revolution sweeping through the Arab world.
Speaker 1: David lash is the writer who spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time with Bashar. We heard about him in the last
Speaker 1: episode UH. He wrote a book called The Fall of
Speaker 1: the House of Assad. It cites several articles that the
Speaker 1: regime published during this time. Both in its own magazine
Speaker 1: Forward and in a Wall Street Journal interview with Assad quote.
Speaker 1: Both articles in the February issue reflected the presidents and
Speaker 1: the regime sense of immunity from the virus of protests
Speaker 1: spreading elsewhere in the Arab world. The editor in chief
Speaker 1: of the magazine, Dr Samim will bay It, is a
Speaker 1: professor of international relations in the country and one of
Speaker 1: its foremost commentators. He has access to high places in Syria,
Speaker 1: and therefore his essays often reflect regime sentiments. For this issue,
Speaker 1: he wrote a piece entitled Lessened from Egypt West is
Speaker 1: not best. In it, Mbaiad repeatedly hammers home the point
Speaker 1: that the dictators in the Arab world who had either
Speaker 1: fallen by then President Bin Ali and Tunisia or were
Speaker 1: on their way out President Hostnu Mobarik of Egypt and
Speaker 1: President of Doula, Sala and Yemen were being run out
Speaker 1: of office by widespread popular protest, primarily because over the
Speaker 1: years they had been the lackeys of the West, particularly
Speaker 1: of the United States. So Assad and his cronies at
Speaker 1: first thought they would be safe from the Arab spring, because,
Speaker 1: of course, Assad hadn't been an American lackey Mbaiad's article
Speaker 1: ends ironically by accurately describing the forces then sweeping the
Speaker 1: Arab world, which they just didn't think We're gonna come
Speaker 1: for them. Quote. What is so beautiful about the Tunisian
Speaker 1: and Egyptian stories is that this time it wasn't flamboyant
Speaker 1: and inexperienced young officers toppling the young king norma. Was
Speaker 1: it turbent clerics toppling an autocratic and aging royal like
Speaker 1: Iran nineteen seventy nine. It was also not US tanks
Speaker 1: rubbling into Tunisia, as was the case with Baghdad in
Speaker 1: two thousand three. It was the people of Tunisia, the
Speaker 1: young and the old, the innale actual and the unemployed.
Speaker 1: It was the glorious people of Egypt who said enough
Speaker 1: is enough. What mubay It and other Assadus did not
Speaker 1: see is that the exact same forces that had made
Speaker 1: Tunisia right for revolution and demi crushing corruption that robbed
Speaker 1: young people have paths towards a decent life and left
Speaker 1: them hopeless, underemployed, and enraged. That was present in Syria
Speaker 1: as well. While assad had opened up the economy somewhat,
Speaker 1: every reform was calculated in one way or another to
Speaker 1: benefit his core supporters or gain him new supporters, because
Speaker 1: every dictatorship in every country is just a gigantic gangster
Speaker 1: enterprise when you get right down to it. Wait, so
Speaker 1: they he thought that his people hadn't noticed what he
Speaker 1: was up to. Basically, he thought his people loved him
Speaker 1: and that they would not revolt because he hadn't been
Speaker 1: a lackey of the US. He thought the Arab spring
Speaker 1: was people being angry at dictators in their region, uh
Speaker 1: doing what the US wanted. And he was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm I don't like the US, so people will back me,
Speaker 1: Like obviously they're going to keep loving bashar God. These dudes.
Speaker 1: That's what's crazy, is like they have no sense of
Speaker 1: what's going on around them, Like not at all. No,
Speaker 1: that's what happens when you have the bat like arresting
Speaker 1: and torturing everybody who is like, maybe things could be
Speaker 1: less corrupt. I guess you don't pay people to tell
Speaker 1: you anything negative. You pay people to tell you we
Speaker 1: have arrested X number of dissidents and they are in
Speaker 1: a dark hole instead of being like just f y,
Speaker 1: I like, so we took a survey and it looks like, um,
Speaker 1: people like think you're shady. Yeah, people don't like that
Speaker 1: we throw so many people in the dark holes that
Speaker 1: actually the dark hole approval rating is like eight percent.
Speaker 1: No no one in this yeah, no one almost no
Speaker 1: one's we like the dark holes. That's the eight percent
Speaker 1: is the is the Macabat vote. They vote for dark holes,
Speaker 1: but everyone else really against the dark holes that we
Speaker 1: throw dissidents into. It looks like we're not We're not
Speaker 1: getting the numbers we were hoping for dark holes. We're
Speaker 1: thinking of rebranding the dark hole that we throw dissidents into.
Speaker 1: What about this rainbow circle? I love it? I love it.
Speaker 1: That's the I forget which one of us now is
Speaker 1: the brand name? Yeah. In February two th eleven, Maria Siasna,
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old kid, was hanging out with his
Speaker 1: friends in the Syrian town of Dara. Tunisia's dictator had
Speaker 1: just been forced out of power, and these kids were ornery,
Speaker 1: so they scared up some red paint and daubed your
Speaker 1: Turn Doctor on the walls of their school. Now Dara
Speaker 1: is a fairly small rural town near the border with
Speaker 1: Jordan's At that point, Syria was in the grip of
Speaker 1: an intense drought, which had reduced crop yields and crippled
Speaker 1: the already stumbling economy. Youth unemployment was particularly bad, and
Speaker 1: Maria and his friends had little hope of growing up
Speaker 1: in a world with many options for them if things
Speaker 1: continued on the way they were going. So they painted
Speaker 1: a threat against their dictator on the wall of their school,
Speaker 1: and soon after that all hell broke loose. Assad's men
Speaker 1: quickly arrested the tenth graders and sent them back to
Speaker 1: Damascus to be brutally tortured by a bunch of Nazi
Speaker 1: trained torture experts. This was a pretty normal move from Mikabarat,
Speaker 1: but unknown to Bashar the in those secret policemen, the
Speaker 1: winds of the world had just changed. The people of
Speaker 1: Dara were quite suddenly unwilling to accept this kind of bullshit.
Speaker 1: On March of two thousand eleven, they took to the streets.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of people, many of them relatives of the arrested boys,
Speaker 1: protested the regime. The crowd grew to thousands. B Shar's
Speaker 1: police opened fire, killing four and dispersing the crowd, But
Speaker 1: the next day, twenty thousand furious Syrians took to the streets,
Speaker 1: and the days that followed things grew more violent, and
Speaker 1: Mukabarat offices were vandalized, more protesters were murdered in larger numbers.
Speaker 1: Funerals of the dead became protests, and so the regime
Speaker 1: banned funerals. Yeah, when you're banning funerals, you might be
Speaker 1: uh monstrous statalitarian dictating. Yeah, I mean it's crazy that
Speaker 1: these kids had no I do what they were about
Speaker 1: to literally like domino effect into but like how could
Speaker 1: they have possibly known? So, I mean you're banning funerals,
Speaker 1: it's like, then stop fucking killing everybody. Maybe like taking
Speaker 1: as a goddamn hint. If people are this upset, maybe
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be easy to reduce the funerals. Stop killing people.
Speaker 1: I guess common sense isn't a thing within regime, So
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm even saying. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's a type of common sense within the logic of
Speaker 1: murdering people, within regime logic where you're like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: says that we, you know, have to murder everyone who
Speaker 1: stands up to us. Yeah, if you're a regime, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, none of this work to stop the
Speaker 1: growing unrest. A single act of childish graffiti and Dara
Speaker 1: wound up being the spark that started the Syrian Civil War,
Speaker 1: which is so far at the deadliest civil war of
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. According to David lesh Quote, it
Speaker 1: is almost certain that Bashar al Assad absolutely shocked when
Speaker 1: the uprisings in the Arab world started to seep into
Speaker 1: his country in March two thousand eleven. I believe he
Speaker 1: truly thought he was safe and secure and popular in
Speaker 1: the country and was beyond condemnation. But this was not
Speaker 1: the case in the Middle East of two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: where the stream of information via the Internet, Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: YouTube and mobile phones could not be controlled as it
Speaker 1: once had been. On March two thousand eleven, but Shar
Speaker 1: al Assad addressed his nation over the continuing unrest. He
Speaker 1: promised vague reforms, which of course he could not actually
Speaker 1: deliver upon. Any reforms to reduce corruption would be taking
Speaker 1: money out of the pockets of his supporters, which of
Speaker 1: course he could not afford to do at the moment.
Speaker 1: Any actual political openness would be seized upon his weakness
Speaker 1: and lead to his fall from power. So he promised nothing,
Speaker 1: and ended his speech with quote, I shall remain the
Speaker 1: faithful brother and comrade who will walk with his people
Speaker 1: and lead them to build the Syria. We love the Syria.
Speaker 1: We are proud of the Syria, which is invincible to
Speaker 1: its enemies. You know, I do wonder if he like
Speaker 1: he just was in over his head and started I
Speaker 1: mean not that I'm in any way defending LA, but
Speaker 1: I wonder if he was over his head and then
Speaker 1: just started to panic, like just being like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: kill it, kill kill mall yeah. And then now he's like, ship, Well,
Speaker 1: now that I've like in my panic have started acting
Speaker 1: like a full psycho, I guess I just have to
Speaker 1: keep it going. Yeah. You know there's a version of
Speaker 1: this where that is what goes on, where he's kind
Speaker 1: of like a Czar Nicholas figure, and like the initial
Speaker 1: bloodletting is more accidental because of how the regimes set up,
Speaker 1: that's how the security forces respond. You the leader are
Speaker 1: left grappling with it. But then things hit a certain
Speaker 1: point and it's like, well they're gonna kill me or
Speaker 1: I can kill all of them. Yeah. There is kind
Speaker 1: of like a vibe, like a really dumb vibe where
Speaker 1: he's like, I guess I'm a dictator now, Like it's like,
Speaker 1: you fucking idiot, But he had been before, like you
Speaker 1: operated Nazi torture dungeons, then let the CIA use them
Speaker 1: like Bashar wasn't. Yeah, it's he's there's definitely an aspect
Speaker 1: of this that is a guy like obviously he didn't
Speaker 1: want this. Nobody, no, none of these people want there
Speaker 1: to be a civil war because there's a chance that
Speaker 1: like you get thrown out of power. Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll we'll talk about that more by the end.
Speaker 1: We'll see what conclusion you come to about how how
Speaker 1: his journey on this. For most of the world, Friday
Speaker 1: April one was April Fool's Day. In Syria. In two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, it was the Friday of Martyrs. This was
Speaker 1: the name given to a day of furious protests across
Speaker 1: the country, conducted in the name of the dozens who
Speaker 1: had been shot dead by security forces and the hundreds
Speaker 1: who were currently being tortured. This time, but char al
Speaker 1: Assad ordered snipers up on the roofs of cities around
Speaker 1: the country. They fired randomly into crowds of activists and
Speaker 1: shot anyone who broke curfew. Next, according to Lesha's book
Speaker 1: quote in New May and June two thousand eleven, the
Speaker 1: regime continued to engage in a schizophrenic response to the protests.
Speaker 1: While can hinduing to make some concessions and announce reform measures,
Speaker 1: the military and security forces intensified their crackdown in cities
Speaker 1: across Syria that were hit by demonstrations. To the outside observer,
Speaker 1: this approach may seem contradictory and indicative of fissures within
Speaker 1: the ruling elite on how to respond to the crisis.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, from the perspective of the shar
Speaker 1: in his inner circle, it could be seen as two
Speaker 1: sides of the same coin in a way that came
Speaker 1: to be expected of the Assad regimes old and new.
Speaker 1: It was something of an axiom of power politics that
Speaker 1: one offers concessions only from a position of strength, never
Speaker 1: from a position of weakness. Therefore, while there was also
Speaker 1: a practical side to the Assad approach in terms of
Speaker 1: repressing the unrest, it also clearly indicated that the regime
Speaker 1: wanted to portray itself is only making concessions and offering
Speaker 1: reform measures from a position of strength. Mhm, so he
Speaker 1: just okay, sorry and yeah, no, I mean he he
Speaker 1: wants to He's willing to give people concessions, but only
Speaker 1: if he stays in control. And the only way to
Speaker 1: stay in control is to kill people, right, But he
Speaker 1: didn't really like what were the concession Like, did any
Speaker 1: did anything come of that? Yeah? No, not really, Like
Speaker 1: it was the same as the concessions he offered at
Speaker 1: the start of his reign, where it's like, I'll open
Speaker 1: things up, but like you already did that and then
Speaker 1: closed them down again because it was bad for you.
Speaker 1: Like why would you trust Bashar al Assad at this point? Uh? Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the people who died so but schar could
Speaker 1: offer reform from a position of strength was Hamza al Katib.
Speaker 1: He was thirteen years old when he went missing on
Speaker 1: the twenty ninth of April. His battered and abused corpse
Speaker 1: was returned to his family a month later. His family
Speaker 1: shared pictures of their boys torn up body on social media,
Speaker 1: and raged at his murder, spread viral. E Asad's government,
Speaker 1: of course, denied torturing the child. They had a doctor
Speaker 1: who worked for the government examined the body. He concluded
Speaker 1: that all of the scars and holes and injuries were
Speaker 1: not consistent with torture. Bashar al Assad made a big
Speaker 1: show of visiting the family to share his uh sadness
Speaker 1: that this tragic and inexplicable death that he and his
Speaker 1: security apparatus had no role in the Like, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like no no torture here, So sorry about
Speaker 1: your boy. What a mystery. Yeah, you know, based on
Speaker 1: you know, my work as an optometrist, I can see
Speaker 1: there is no torture. M hmm. Yeah, his eyes look great,
Speaker 1: look good. Good piece of ship, yeah, real piece of ship.
Speaker 1: This photo up with the grieving family of a murdered
Speaker 1: boy did not shockingly reduce opposition to the Assad regime.
Speaker 1: A Facebook page was created in his name, garnering sixty
Speaker 1: thousand supporters. One commenter wrote, there is no place left
Speaker 1: here for a regime after what they did to Hamsa.
Speaker 1: On July eleven, seven Syrian Arab Army officers defected from
Speaker 1: the military, forming the core of the Free Syrian Army.
Speaker 1: By November, the f s A was strong enough to
Speaker 1: launch armed attacks on the regime itself in this way
Speaker 1: and stops and starts the protests and street activism and
Speaker 1: violent state repression gradually escalated to full fledged warfare. In
Speaker 1: January of two thousand twelve, Neustra Front and his Lamist
Speaker 1: rebel group declared their opposition to the regime. Whole cities
Speaker 1: wound up an open rebellion to the state in February
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, but Shar had his army assault Holmes,
Speaker 1: the third largest city in Syria. Four hundred people, virtually
Speaker 1: all of them civilians, were killed on the first day.
Speaker 1: You see, Assad's army crumbled fairly quickly in the face
Speaker 1: of the rebellion. It had never been a particularly potent force,
Speaker 1: and many of its men had deserted for the other
Speaker 1: side once the fighting started. At one point, he had
Speaker 1: less than five thousand soldiers in the whole country, so
Speaker 1: Assad relied heavily on random artillery strikes and equally random
Speaker 1: bombings by his air force, which was the one thing
Speaker 1: he had that the rebels did not. The Syrian air
Speaker 1: force was from the beginning Assad's greatest weapon against his
Speaker 1: own people. In August two thousand twelve, the regime was
Speaker 1: filmed dropping its very first barrel bomb on the city
Speaker 1: of Halms. Now, and you know what a barrel bomb
Speaker 1: is Um, I'm gonna guess most people have heard the term. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's probably the iconic weapon of the Syrian Civil War,
Speaker 1: and it's essentially a huge metal barrel packed full of
Speaker 1: high explosives and shrapnel, nails, metal bits, whatever. It all
Speaker 1: functions the same with a few dozen pounds of r
Speaker 1: d X behind it. A barrel bomb is the kind
Speaker 1: of weapon you deploy when you don't care who you kill.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, it's there's a video on YouTube that
Speaker 1: I would recommend listeners watch. If you just type in
Speaker 1: a sod barrels, you will find it. Um it's horrific. Uh,
Speaker 1: one of the worst things I've ever seen. Like the
Speaker 1: wake of these bombings is um, almost indescribable. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's worse than what I've seen in the wake of
Speaker 1: US air strikes, which is pretty horrific in and of itself,
Speaker 1: But an explosive like this, it's just like a particularly
Speaker 1: awful way to wage war, like even worse than a
Speaker 1: hell fire missile. It's like I don't understand, Like he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what's crazy. Like he's he says, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna give concessions I'm gonna work with
Speaker 1: you guys, so you don't keep protesting me. And then
Speaker 1: he just goes and like kills a town. What's what's
Speaker 1: the issue with the regime, what's everybody's problem? I'm gonna
Speaker 1: drop just barrels of death on you guys. Why is it?
Speaker 1: Why is nobody like me? Yeah, it's like, dude, like
Speaker 1: fucking read the room. Yeah, read the room. What are
Speaker 1: we doing here anymore? I don't even this is it's
Speaker 1: so crazy, Like it's so hard to wrap your mind
Speaker 1: around someone who in a way, like when you first
Speaker 1: think about it, like he didn't want to become the leader.
Speaker 1: He had so much potential to just be a good
Speaker 1: human being in an office running a country, like coming
Speaker 1: from his point of view of being like I don't
Speaker 1: really want to run a country, like I just want
Speaker 1: to be this regular doctor like blah blah blah. It's
Speaker 1: like I could just be an easy going guy who's
Speaker 1: like one of the people. Um. I mean, honestly, it
Speaker 1: goes back to bad parenting. Uh, but this is insane.
Speaker 1: It's like so insane that he was like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's just turn this around and kill everybody. Yep, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm murdering. Yeah, and uh, he got right to murdering. Um.
Speaker 1: I'd like to quote from a Doctor's Without Borders article
Speaker 1: about the use of barrel bombs primarily in the city
Speaker 1: of Aleppo during the fighting there. Barrel bombings and Eastern
Speaker 1: Aleppo were so unpredictable and widespread that they have sown
Speaker 1: fear throughout the city. It is extremely difficult for someone
Speaker 1: to take measures to protect their families and improve their safety.
Speaker 1: What contributes to higher levels of psychological stress. You never
Speaker 1: know when a bomb can happen. This is the problem.
Speaker 1: You could be at home having dinner, you could be sleeping,
Speaker 1: you could be walking to the shop. At any time
Speaker 1: it might happen. Especially coming to Turkey. For those who
Speaker 1: have to go to Turkey for work or two unite
Speaker 1: family members, it is a very scary route as you
Speaker 1: don't know who you might meet and what might happen.
Speaker 1: You don't know if you will return home safe or
Speaker 1: see your family again. That's a quote from a Tarik,
Speaker 1: a health worker in Alsama, Aleppo. So but Charlasad punished
Speaker 1: Aleppo and other cities for their disobedience by leveling the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the buildings there with endless reigns of
Speaker 1: barrel bombs during the four year battle for Aleppo, residents
Speaker 1: would celebrate whenever the weather was cloudy, because it meant
Speaker 1: that they would at least get a few hours break
Speaker 1: before the next bombs fell. One staff member told Doctors
Speaker 1: Without Borders quote, one day when we were working at
Speaker 1: the hospital in eastern Aleppo was the day of a
Speaker 1: high number of barrel bombings. It was like the city
Speaker 1: was in chaos, and lots of people were being brought
Speaker 1: to us, dead and alive. I remember when two bodies
Speaker 1: were brought in, an old man and his small grandson.
Speaker 1: They both had the same name. They must have been
Speaker 1: together when the bomb hit. The family was searching for
Speaker 1: them in all the hospitals of Aleppo, but couldn't find them.
Speaker 1: Their neighbors had also been bombed, so there was no
Speaker 1: one to ask about the whereabouts of these two. Finally
Speaker 1: they came and the bodies were identified. It was all
Speaker 1: just one instance, but still we all felt so sad. Yeah, yeah, no, one,
Speaker 1: that's so sad. There's like just no, you just don't know.
Speaker 1: You don't know what's going to happen at any point
Speaker 1: at any time. You just live in fucking fear that
Speaker 1: the man who runs your country just may like casual
Speaker 1: decide to bomb your town or your home. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: just like, oh, well, you know, one of those days. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank god for the clouds so we don't get barrel bombed.
Speaker 1: The president can't murder us today unless the clouds go away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Chris kozak Assyria research analysts for the Institute of the
Speaker 1: Study of War, explains that the regime's strategy with barrel
Speaker 1: bombs is to quote, inflict mass punishment against opposition supported
Speaker 1: populations or populations that were perceived to be supportive of
Speaker 1: the opposition in order to prevent the formation of a
Speaker 1: viable alternative to the regime. And it really seems to
Speaker 1: have worked. Like the Free Syrian Army at the start
Speaker 1: was a really secular force run by a lot of
Speaker 1: really brave men, and it's sort of degraded into kind
Speaker 1: of a lot of bandits and extremists at this point,
Speaker 1: just because everybody at the start of the civil war
Speaker 1: who was like providing a viable alternative to Bashar's government
Speaker 1: and like was a hope of civil society. Like he
Speaker 1: killed them all, um, Like that was a big part
Speaker 1: of his strategy is like, oh, they want to run
Speaker 1: Syria without me, Well I'll just murder everybody who can
Speaker 1: run Syria without me. Yeah, everyone's gone, Yeah, everybody's everybody's gone,
Speaker 1: and all the survivors are too shell shocked and terrified
Speaker 1: to do anything but hide. That's a strategy. Do we
Speaker 1: know how many people are left in his army? No?
Speaker 1: I mean at this point, he's conscripted a lot more,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's up to a higher level. But
Speaker 1: there was one point where they were essentially militias and
Speaker 1: gangs that were allied with the regime were way larger
Speaker 1: than the actual Syrian Erab army, you know, especially if
Speaker 1: you're talking like two fourteen. Yeah, he's got like help
Speaker 1: from Iran in other places, Yeah, yeah, a lot of yeah,
Speaker 1: help from Iran, help from his blah, help from help
Speaker 1: from Russia. Um B Shar's favorite target for his barrel
Speaker 1: bombs outside of the crowdit apartment buildings as hospitals. On
Speaker 1: one day, he struck a left post in tent hospital
Speaker 1: with two barrel bombs, two cluster bombs in one rocket. Now,
Speaker 1: striking hospitals is a war crime, but Assad figures what's
Speaker 1: the harm in committing war crimes when you know nobody
Speaker 1: is ever going to punish you. They're not really crimes,
Speaker 1: then are they. He also loves bombing elementary schools, and
Speaker 1: one two fourteen attack he killed twenty five small children
Speaker 1: with a single bomb. When interviewed by the BBC, Bashar
Speaker 1: al Assad denies his regime has ever deployed barrel bombs,
Speaker 1: saying it's a childish story that keeps repeating in the West.
Speaker 1: If someone who is against his people and against regional
Speaker 1: powers and the great powers in the West, how did
Speaker 1: they survive? If you kill the Syrian people, do they
Speaker 1: support you or do they turn against you? As long
Speaker 1: as you have the public support, it means you are
Speaker 1: defending the people. If you kill the people, they turn
Speaker 1: against you. It's commons sense. You can watch people drop
Speaker 1: barrels out of Syrian Air Force planes on the buildings,
Speaker 1: but you know there's no like he's bombing hospitals because
Speaker 1: they're like treating people who aren't for him like that
Speaker 1: because they're in rebel controlled chunks of the city and
Speaker 1: kill them all. Yeah, a big part of it is
Speaker 1: just completely destroying any kind of resistance to the regime.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of war he's waging. Like, I was
Speaker 1: not against when the US went and bombed what they
Speaker 1: thought were his chemical weapon factories. Everyone was offended by it,
Speaker 1: being like we're going to war. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: we're fucking doing something. Fuck this guy. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things. I mean, we didn't actually like I'm against
Speaker 1: it because it was completely useless and accomplished nothing. I'm
Speaker 1: not against attacking the Syrian regime and trying to destroy
Speaker 1: their chemical weapon stock piles. But if you're talking about
Speaker 1: the Trump administration's cruise missile attack, like it just didn't
Speaker 1: fucking do anything, but it was I like that it
Speaker 1: was something to be like, we fucking see you, bro. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's at least it's it's not nothing. Um So I'll
Speaker 1: give it that, like it's better than nothing. But I
Speaker 1: will say it didn't accomplish anything other than maybe scaring
Speaker 1: him a little bit. But I don't even know how
Speaker 1: much it scared him because the next day he fucking
Speaker 1: released that photo of himself walking through with a briefcase,
Speaker 1: which is like, motherfucker, were you even carrying a briefcase?
Speaker 1: What are you keeping that briefcase? Like you fucking asshole.
Speaker 1: Fucking b shoe you you baby, you've got nothing. You
Speaker 1: know who's not an asshole walking with a briefcase through
Speaker 1: the ruins of his destroyed airfield. Anna, the advertisers who
Speaker 1: support this show nice. Yes, that's the behind the bastards guarantee.
Speaker 1: None of our advertisers are bashar all assade. And watch
Speaker 1: the fucking next ad that gets randomly. It's going to
Speaker 1: Damascus Airport now open for business again, see the wonderful beaches.
Speaker 1: I would love to see Damascus if there was a
Speaker 1: way to do it without you know, putting, putting putting.
Speaker 1: Well no, I mean it's pretty safe for travelers. It's
Speaker 1: just you'd be putting money into the regime and I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. But Damascus is a city
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to say anyway, Yeah, it's incredible. My
Speaker 1: my Arabic teacher was a Syrian and he was from Aleppo,
Speaker 1: and this was back in two thousand six. Um. I
Speaker 1: just remember how much he would talk about how beautiful
Speaker 1: his city was, proud he was of his country, about
Speaker 1: how we created the alphabet, like that's a real thing
Speaker 1: that the Syrians aim. Yeah, fucking made math. Yeah, horrible tragedy.
Speaker 1: What's happened not a horrible tragedy? Are our products and services?
Speaker 1: Was that a good ad break, Sophie? Do we do
Speaker 1: it right? No? Well it's done. Products, we're back, We're
Speaker 1: back after what I have to assume is the best
Speaker 1: ad break anyone has ever done. Um, it's gonna be like,
Speaker 1: do you like regimes? You're gonna love but charlads And
Speaker 1: you're like, wait, what just literally an ad for places
Speaker 1: on our side? He's like, hey, guys, I get a
Speaker 1: lot of heat. But what you don't know is I'm
Speaker 1: actually quite self deprecating in a real fun guy and
Speaker 1: people love my giggle. He's actually he's hosting a new
Speaker 1: podcast about Phil Collins. That would that would be so wild.
Speaker 1: He's like, guys, I love Phil Collins and my first
Speaker 1: guests are Brad and Angelina. Check it out on the
Speaker 1: Sadcast podcast. I hate to say it, but that's a
Speaker 1: it's a solid it's a solid name. So we make
Speaker 1: that podcast. No, under no circumstances should we make that podcast? Cool?
Speaker 1: You're not? Okay? Yeah, let's uh, let's not make that podcast. So. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can watch dozens of videos of Assad's regime dropping
Speaker 1: barrel bombs if you want to see that yourself. For
Speaker 1: some reason, at least a hundred and eighty one thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty seven civilians have been killed in
Speaker 1: battle by the Syrian regime, which is ninety five point
Speaker 1: seven percent of the total combat death toll in the
Speaker 1: Syrian Civil War. These are just confirmed dead, with total
Speaker 1: expected fatalities over half a million. The real number is
Speaker 1: much likely higher. The regime has killed at least eighteen thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty six children, nine three point six
Speaker 1: percent of the children who are known to have died
Speaker 1: in the Syrians Civil War. Now, that number leaves out
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty eight thousand people who have been missing,
Speaker 1: in many cases for years, inside the secret prisons run
Speaker 1: by the Bashar al Assad government. According to the New
Speaker 1: York Times quote, government memos smuggled out of the country
Speaker 1: show that officials who reported directly to Mr. Alissad ordered
Speaker 1: the crackdowns on civilians and new of atrocities. They ordered
Speaker 1: a harsh treatment of specific detainees, and complained of increasing
Speaker 1: detainee deaths as corpses piled up and decomposed. One government
Speaker 1: memo urged personnel to complete paperwork and protect officials from
Speaker 1: future prosecution. Detainees are regularly beaten, hung by their wrists,
Speaker 1: beaten while crammed inside tires, shocked with electricity, and sexually assaulted.
Speaker 1: More baroque forms of torture include forcing detainees to act
Speaker 1: like animals, beat or kill one another, and dousing them
Speaker 1: with fuel and burning them. It's possible that more than
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand people have died that way, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is for reference in Libya since two thousand eleven. If
Speaker 1: you include all of the deaths in the fighting to
Speaker 1: overthrow Kaddafi and all of the deaths in the violence
Speaker 1: since Kaddafi's overthrow, two nineteen fifty people have died from
Speaker 1: the violence in Libya. But char Alassa it has tortured
Speaker 1: twice that many people to death, not counting the barrel bombs,
Speaker 1: not counting the chemical weapons, not counting gunfire, not counting mortars,
Speaker 1: not counting rockets, not counting Russian airplanes, just torturing people
Speaker 1: to death twice as many people as have died in
Speaker 1: Libya since two thousand eleven fighting God bless all them people,
Speaker 1: because fighting for what you believe in in the Middle
Speaker 1: East is suicides. Yeah, it's always for the most part,
Speaker 1: not going to get the way you would like. Has
Speaker 1: not in a while. Uh now, after all this horrifying brutality,
Speaker 1: all these senseless deaths. I know what you're wondering, Anna,
Speaker 1: how has this war been for Bashar and his lovely
Speaker 1: wife Ozma. Well, your your face, you skin cancer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it's like cancer, get
Speaker 1: your boys like this. These are the people to to
Speaker 1: happen to. But they'll probably both live to a hundred
Speaker 1: and three. Um, but I know you're curious as to
Speaker 1: what their daily life has been. The good news is
Speaker 1: that thousands of their emails were leaked to The Guardian,
Speaker 1: so we actually have a pretty good idea of what
Speaker 1: they got up to in between all the barrel bombs
Speaker 1: and such. First off, so how did their emails get leaked?
Speaker 1: I don't know, It's just just something that happens. They
Speaker 1: confirmed it. The Guardian confirmed it with a number of
Speaker 1: different people, including recipients of the emails, that they were
Speaker 1: legitimate and stuff. Um, you know, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: How did fucking you know, shiploads of people's emails get
Speaker 1: leaked out these days? It's just the how what happens
Speaker 1: got the hackers out there? Them hackers. Now, Uh, first off,
Speaker 1: you're gonna guess what the assad's favorite TV show has
Speaker 1: been during the Civil War? Oh know, like what like
Speaker 1: Friends on Netflix? America's got talent? Oh my god, yea,
Speaker 1: they are such trash. They are basic bitches. I feel
Speaker 1: comfortable saying that. Uh. Also big fans of the Harry
Speaker 1: Potter movies. There was some worry at one point that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to get their hands on Harry
Speaker 1: Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part two because of the war,
Speaker 1: but they did get a copy. So I'm actually not
Speaker 1: surprised by that because I bet but chars he's a
Speaker 1: lot of himself and like Baltimore, like, you know, this
Speaker 1: guy makes a lot of good points. This guy is
Speaker 1: making a lot of He's saying all the right things.
Speaker 1: He was death eaters, Yeah, good luck. Yeah. Here's the
Speaker 1: Guardian quote in one email, all a sad laughs at
Speaker 1: democratic reforms. When his wife tells him she'll come home
Speaker 1: early one day, he quips, this is the best reform
Speaker 1: any country can have. That you told me where you
Speaker 1: will be. We are going to adopt it instead of
Speaker 1: the rubbish laws of parties, elections, media and that funny
Speaker 1: how about you fuck you don't like his dictator women?
Speaker 1: Am I right? It's like, get the fuck out of here,
Speaker 1: you're killing people. Al Assad joked with how deal al Ali,
Speaker 1: one of his media consultants, while Arab League monitors were
Speaker 1: in serious seeking to bring it into the carnage. Al
Speaker 1: Assad ridiculed the mission, sending al Ali a YouTube parody
Speaker 1: of the violence that uses children's toys. Check out this video,
Speaker 1: he wrote. She responded with ha ha ha ha ha
Speaker 1: o MG exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, what m
Speaker 1: this bitch? And there was a sad fucking looking up
Speaker 1: YouTube videos while his forces are murdering, bombing hospitals. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only vague suggestion one gets that Bashar might have
Speaker 1: something that approaches a conscience comes from an email he's
Speaker 1: sent on February five, two th twelve, on the day
Speaker 1: after his artillery had killed four hundred civilians in the
Speaker 1: city of Halms, pulping flesh and bone and concrete into
Speaker 1: a powdered slurry. If broke and lives, Assad sent his
Speaker 1: wife an iTunes download of a country song by Blake Shelton.
Speaker 1: He wrote out some of the lyrics in the email.
Speaker 1: I've been a walk in heart heartache. I've made a
Speaker 1: mess of me. The person that I've been lately ain't
Speaker 1: who I want to be. Are you? I am fucking
Speaker 1: serious if that is not a reason to fucking blow
Speaker 1: his brains out, Like what are you even talking about?
Speaker 1: There's nothing relatable about you, fool, No fucking Blake Shelton,
Speaker 1: Like I would say, listen to Chris Christofferson, but Chris
Speaker 1: Christofferson's music would like destroy itself before it let it
Speaker 1: self into a dictation. Honestly, I'm actually not surprised because
Speaker 1: he probably agrees with like Blake Shelton's like skittles are
Speaker 1: for gay people, tweets or something that Blake Shelton, he
Speaker 1: makes it. Yeah, exactly, Fucking Blake Shelton. You should be
Speaker 1: a shame too. Blake Shelton, You're a part of the problem.
Speaker 1: You're a part of the problem. I would be so
Speaker 1: bummed out if it turned out a dictator was a
Speaker 1: fan of any of my work like that. Would that
Speaker 1: would be such a fucking bummer. Oh god, yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: be bummed out if I was JK rowling to know
Speaker 1: that they were watching movies based off my books even
Speaker 1: though like, you know, you didn't do anything wrong there,
Speaker 1: but like still bummer. Like the producers of America's Got Talent, like,
Speaker 1: oh no, they've been playing to the Assad demographic for years.
Speaker 1: That's a critical part of America's Got Talent. Do you
Speaker 1: think he's ever tried to make like a serious got talent?
Speaker 1: I bet that's coming once the warrants and everyone's like
Speaker 1: performing at gunpoint, or it's trying out his hobbies. Him
Speaker 1: doing like a tight five. Yeah, it's guess who wins
Speaker 1: bar every single time every year. It's you again. But
Speaker 1: his wife is the judge, it's the talent, and it's
Speaker 1: him versus the memory of his dead brother. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: just like, looks like he can in because he's dead. Oh,
Speaker 1: looks who's better at computers now? Bessel, Like, oh boy,
Speaker 1: what a sad, sad, sad experience. In July of two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, when tens of thousands of Syrians were taking
Speaker 1: to the streets to protest the hopelessness of life under
Speaker 1: the rule of the Assads and the brutality of the
Speaker 1: state security apparatus, Ozma al Assad ordered through her cousin
Speaker 1: bespoke jewelry from a small jeweler in Paris. She ordered
Speaker 1: four necklaces quote, one turquoise with yellow gold diamonds and
Speaker 1: a small puff on the side, one full black onyx
Speaker 1: and amethyst and white gold diamonds. She stated that she
Speaker 1: hoped it would be ready in September, but she said
Speaker 1: that she understood if it took longer, telling her cousin,
Speaker 1: I am absolutely clueless when it comes to find jewelry.
Speaker 1: She ended the letter by saying, kisses to you both,
Speaker 1: and don't worry. We're well. See, someone needs to like
Speaker 1: take it upon themselves to um fill that jewelry with
Speaker 1: like poison gag us that comes out when they put
Speaker 1: them on. She would be nice. I assume they have
Speaker 1: the jewelry by now, but if you can poison the
Speaker 1: Assades jewelry, clearly she's gonna buy more. I would say,
Speaker 1: do it, yeah, yeah, she's gonna buy If you're a
Speaker 1: French jeweler, just poison all your jewelry that probably we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be shouldn't be urging that. I assume other people
Speaker 1: buy French jewelry, only jewelry that's going to the ASSAD regime.
Speaker 1: Only jewelry that's going to the Assad regime. Another email,
Speaker 1: sent in December of two eleven, as the protest campaign
Speaker 1: broke out into a full fledged civil war, Ozma messaged
Speaker 1: her husband quote, if we are strong together, we will
Speaker 1: overcome this together. I love you. Shortly thereafter, she ordered
Speaker 1: a three thousand dollar of oz from Herod's Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like reading shops while this is all going around,
Speaker 1: she shops a ton and reading all this, I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of a quote I came across in a CNN article
Speaker 1: from former Bush administration officer Flint Leverett. He said of
Speaker 1: shar Al Assad, quote, I think whim and Mary says
Speaker 1: a good deal about him. I think that he was
Speaker 1: actually correct, like the fact that he's married to Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette here really really looking at photos of them together
Speaker 1: right now, and they kind of look like their siblings.
Speaker 1: They do a little bit, right. Yeah. They have like
Speaker 1: the same face, yeah, yeah, the same little randy face. Now,
Speaker 1: you'll notice that we've made it through nineteen or twenty
Speaker 1: pages of b char lassade history without talking about chemical weapons.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of good reasons for this. One of
Speaker 1: them is that for the last couple of years, a
Speaker 1: pernicious series of myths and lies has cropped up, helped
Speaker 1: along by incompetent, senile, or outright ethically compromised journalists, claiming
Speaker 1: that the chemical weapons attacks by Baschar Lassade on his
Speaker 1: own people were false flags. These rumors have spread on
Speaker 1: the far right because actual fascists love Bashar al Assad
Speaker 1: since he is a fascist and he's doing what they'd
Speaker 1: like to do to all of their political opponents. The
Speaker 1: same rumors have spread on the far left because it
Speaker 1: allows leftists to have an easy justification for why they
Speaker 1: don't think any action should be taken to stop the
Speaker 1: Shar from carrying out the greatest mass killing of the
Speaker 1: twenty first century. There is no truth to this nonsense. However,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make it super clear that even if
Speaker 1: Bishar had never ordered a single chemical weapon strike, he
Speaker 1: is still the single greatest monster of the twenty one century.
Speaker 1: Even if he had never launched any Sarah, never dropped
Speaker 1: any chlorine like that ship is fucking icing on the
Speaker 1: piece of ship Dictator Cake, Sophie is h is putting
Speaker 1: two fingers in front of the camera, which means that
Speaker 1: this is clearly a great time for an ad break.
Speaker 1: Nothing gets advertisers excited like talking about chemical weapons attacks.
Speaker 1: Now she's flipping me off, and I don't understand why. Anna,
Speaker 1: you look very uncomfortable. You know I will not get involved.
Speaker 1: You don't want to. You don't want to get involved
Speaker 1: with mommy and daddy fighting. No comment on what just happened,
Speaker 1: No comment on what just happened. Well, what's about to
Speaker 1: happen is products and services. I'm happier about the services
Speaker 1: and the products. Are we on break? I mean no
Speaker 1: we I haven't said products yet. And the voice that
Speaker 1: I say, are you are you ready for us to
Speaker 1: be on break? Anna? Are you bored? No? But I
Speaker 1: was going to tell you something during our break. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: well products, we're back. And uh. The thing that Anna
Speaker 1: was going to tell me is that asthma al Assad
Speaker 1: does have cancer. Now she has breast cancer, so sometimes
Speaker 1: cancer gets it right. Yeah, that's it's fascinating. It's kind
Speaker 1: of funny that we said that and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden she got cancer. I hope it spreads to
Speaker 1: her husband. I'm sure it's aggressive karma because apparently I
Speaker 1: was just looking that she was offered asylum to get
Speaker 1: out of there, and she said no, and then she
Speaker 1: like came out against the like air strikes, being like
Speaker 1: so irresponsible for you guys to strike our chemical weapon factories.
Speaker 1: It's like, what, dude, what bit funk off with your
Speaker 1: fucking I have an idea, suck a dit dude. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where I did look into
Speaker 1: it to make sure she had so many opportunities to
Speaker 1: get the funk out. And in fact, there's even suggestions
Speaker 1: that at one point, when the war was going more
Speaker 1: against the regime, they actually tried to flee the country,
Speaker 1: but she still stood by her man, so to speak,
Speaker 1: like she she was. There was at no point where
Speaker 1: she was like, bar, maybe we shouldn't be mass murdering people.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could just take our ill gotten money and
Speaker 1: go live in France or something. They could have worked
Speaker 1: that deal out right. Also, I just saw a thing
Speaker 1: part of the emails that leak that she was saying
Speaker 1: that she's the real dictator. Yeah, she's joked about that
Speaker 1: a number of times. What the fuck, dude, you're such
Speaker 1: a bit. She's a monster. Trust beautiful people in power. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's always bad. It's always bad. Uh, Yeah, they're just
Speaker 1: too damn sexy, which is why I did not support
Speaker 1: Barack Obama's election now, but but it did worry me
Speaker 1: how good looking he was. Um. Thankfully, now that we
Speaker 1: have an ugly man as president, everything's on the up
Speaker 1: and up. There's the same problem with George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: Too much raw sexual power was just I know, I know,
Speaker 1: we all did, we all did. Everyone at the press
Speaker 1: pool was just tweaking their nipples during his briefings. It
Speaker 1: was it was. It was a problem now. The deadliest
Speaker 1: of Bhar's chemical weapons attacks occurred in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: when he launched a barrage of rockets containing seren nerve
Speaker 1: gas on Gudha, a rebel controlled suburb of Damascus. Undred
Speaker 1: people were killed. The un confirmed, overwhelming and indisputable evidence
Speaker 1: of saren used at the massacre. Gary Quinlan, the Australian
Speaker 1: UN Ambassador and President of the UN Security Council, is
Speaker 1: set in the report on the attack. Quote confirms in
Speaker 1: our view that there was no remaining doubt it was
Speaker 1: the regime that used chemical weapons. A more recent two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen chemical weapon attack on kane Kun killed eighty
Speaker 1: six people. Doctors without Borders independently confirmed the use of
Speaker 1: chemical weapons in this attack. This attack prompted the Trump
Speaker 1: administration to fire cruise muscles at a mostly empty air base. Uh, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot. Like you can go in a rabbit
Speaker 1: hole and read a bunch of people putting out like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at this detail of this picture means that these
Speaker 1: attacks were fake, or that there wasn't a chemical weapon,
Speaker 1: or that it was the rebels that did it. It's
Speaker 1: the same if you have spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: looking at nine eleven conspiracies, it's the same bullshit. The
Speaker 1: difference is that some respectable journalists like Seymour Hirsch have
Speaker 1: gotten caught up in it because in his case, he's
Speaker 1: fucking old and doesn't know anything about chemical weapons, and
Speaker 1: uh is one of those people who is reflexively going
Speaker 1: to be like whatever America says isn't the truth. Even
Speaker 1: it's like fucking I've I've seen the US commit war
Speaker 1: crimes there have reported on them like fuck everything, but
Speaker 1: fuck pretending these chemical attacks aren't real. There's been like
Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty documented chemical weapons attacks, like percent
Speaker 1: of them have been the Syrian regime. There have been
Speaker 1: a couple by like isis and whatnot who have like
Speaker 1: made like chlorine gas bombs and ship But it is
Speaker 1: very well documented. You can what you can do, like
Speaker 1: go to the Bell and Cat articles documenting some of
Speaker 1: the more recent attacks where they've dropped gas canisters through
Speaker 1: roofs and like go through every picture of it and
Speaker 1: look at the documentation and trace back the research for
Speaker 1: yourself if you really fucking want to. But doctors without
Speaker 1: Borders and the fucking you in observers who have tested
Speaker 1: like the fucking soil and people's bodies and done thousands
Speaker 1: of hours of research into this are all on the
Speaker 1: same page. And it's that the Assad regime is repeatedly
Speaker 1: deployed chemical weapons against its people. Fuck, I get angry
Speaker 1: about this. It's very fucked up. Shows how we keep
Speaker 1: they really are. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's and this
Speaker 1: is I think one of the reasons there's a conspiracy
Speaker 1: around this is because a lot of people can't understand
Speaker 1: why Bashar al Assad would deploy chemical weapons on his
Speaker 1: own people in risk foreign intervention. There's this idea that like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just so risky, why would he do it? And
Speaker 1: I think the answer is that he took the measure
Speaker 1: of the United States during the Bush years, and for
Speaker 1: eight years he balanced helping the US with hindering it,
Speaker 1: and he watched our occupation of Iraq turned into a quagmire,
Speaker 1: and he came to a very clear and very accurate
Speaker 1: conclusion that the United States no longer had the guts
Speaker 1: to intervene seriously in a situation where intervention might cost
Speaker 1: American lives. And he gambled on that gut feeling and
Speaker 1: he won it as simple as that. It's like Hitler
Speaker 1: gambling on fucking annexing the Sudetan land, like it was
Speaker 1: a gamble. It could have fucked up. He had, by
Speaker 1: some accounts, more to lose than to win, but everybody
Speaker 1: else was a fucking coward, so we won. That's how
Speaker 1: it works with dictators, Like I know, it's it's that's
Speaker 1: why I'm like, you know, I have no problem with us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know. Let's send it at
Speaker 1: this point, at this point, there's Honey Potter's and yeah,
Speaker 1: like at this point, I mean the Syrian regime in
Speaker 1: the Russian air forces pounding a province called i Lib
Speaker 1: which has like three million people in it. The vast,
Speaker 1: vast majority of humor civilians. I support trying to enforce
Speaker 1: some sort of no fly zone to stop those people
Speaker 1: from being massacred because the same fucking bombings, saturation bombing
Speaker 1: is happening there. But like there's no good in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven twelve, a good thing could have been worked out.
Speaker 1: That's that there's no possibility. Now there's too many people
Speaker 1: are dead, Like everything's fucked now, we didn't do a
Speaker 1: world Yeah. So um. The other reason he deployed chemical
Speaker 1: weapons is a little bit cannier. At the very start
Speaker 1: of the uprising against his rule, Assad had claimed that
Speaker 1: the forces behind the rebels were not Syrians but foreigners
Speaker 1: trying to undermine his country. Lesh, who's probably the Westerner
Speaker 1: who knows Bshar's mind best, says that once Assad was
Speaker 1: able to convince himself of this, any kind of violence
Speaker 1: was justified, especially since his forces didn't have the manpower
Speaker 1: to fight street district to take back the country. Quote,
Speaker 1: so they need to use the asymmetric methods like chemical
Speaker 1: weapons to brutalize them. There's a good courts article tracking
Speaker 1: out Asad's decision making on this. It quotes a couple
Speaker 1: of Syrian dissidents, who suggests that Assad was quote invoking
Speaker 1: something akin to medieval Western monarchs belief in the divine
Speaker 1: right of kings. Like his father, he always believed that
Speaker 1: he had the right to do whatever he wants to
Speaker 1: his own people, to kill them, torture them, disappear them.
Speaker 1: They are my own people, and that's the sovereignty I
Speaker 1: have explained siata Asad, he says, sees himself as the
Speaker 1: father punishing his errant sons. The father is allowed to
Speaker 1: do whatever when the sons make mistakes. He doesn't understand
Speaker 1: that there's a social contract between the Syrians and elected officials. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't kill innocent people. Don't massacred women and children and
Speaker 1: old people with poison from the sky or fire from
Speaker 1: the sky. Anyone could well, I mean it's a lot
Speaker 1: of countries do that. It's not as obvious a lesson.
Speaker 1: Not that I'm defending them, but like we could stand
Speaker 1: to use that lesson too. Yeah. Whatever. The truth of
Speaker 1: Assad's thinking, time has proven him right on the bet
Speaker 1: that the US and the international community would never be
Speaker 1: willing to take a stand against him. In two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: Bin Rhodes, President Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor and host
Speaker 1: of Pots Safe America Right, he's one of the hosts
Speaker 1: of that. Wrote an article for The Atlantic titled Inside
Speaker 1: the White House during the Syrian Red Line crisis. He
Speaker 1: traces out how the Obama White House went from shock
Speaker 1: and rage in an impulse to do something at the
Speaker 1: Syrian chemical weapons attacks, to gradually conferring with other world
Speaker 1: leaders and backing down. There are a number of reasons
Speaker 1: for this. Fear of being drawn into a disaster like
Speaker 1: a rack, fear of having the Republicans use intervention against
Speaker 1: them as they had in Libya, concerns about Assad's chemical
Speaker 1: weapons winding up in the hands of terrorists, and the
Speaker 1: picture been paints. By the end of the decision making process,
Speaker 1: the ideal logs and the administration had been beaten down
Speaker 1: by real politique. They had all been inspired by writings
Speaker 1: Obama had put out prior in his presidency arguing that
Speaker 1: the US could have saved lives by intervening in Rwanda
Speaker 1: during that genocide. But after weeks of debate over whether
Speaker 1: or not to enforce the Red Line in Syria been
Speaker 1: and the President had this conversation quote, maybe we never
Speaker 1: would have done Rwanda, Obama said the comment was jarring.
Speaker 1: Obama had written about how we should have intervened in Rwanda,
Speaker 1: and people like me had been deeply influenced by that
Speaker 1: in action. But he also frequently pointed out that the
Speaker 1: people urging intervention in Syria had been silent when millions
Speaker 1: of people were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Speaker 1: There's no way there would have been any appetite for that.
Speaker 1: In Congress, you could have done things short of war,
Speaker 1: I said, like, what like jamming the radio signals they
Speaker 1: were using to incite people. He waved his hand at
Speaker 1: me dismissively. That's wishful thinking. You can't stop people from
Speaker 1: killing each other like that, He let the thought hang
Speaker 1: in the air. I'm just saying, maybe there's never a
Speaker 1: time when the American people are going to support this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. In Libya, everything went right. We saved
Speaker 1: thousands of lives, we didn't have a single casualty, and
Speaker 1: we took out a dictator who killed hundreds of Americans.
Speaker 1: And at home it was a negative. I saw what
Speaker 1: he had been doing, testing Congress, testing public opinion to
Speaker 1: see what the real maneuvering room was for his office.
Speaker 1: When it came to intervention in Syria. It was the
Speaker 1: same thing he'd done in situation room meetings on Syria
Speaker 1: and in his mind, testing whether anything we did could
Speaker 1: make things better there or whether it would turn out
Speaker 1: to be like Afghanistan and Iraq, if not worse. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just politics he was wrestling with. It was something
Speaker 1: more fundamental about America, our willingness to take on another war,
Speaker 1: a war whose primary justification would be humanitarian, a war
Speaker 1: likely to win badly. People always say never again, he said,
Speaker 1: but they never want to do anything. You know. There's
Speaker 1: a real darkness to all that, obviously because politics is
Speaker 1: all dark. But the idea that we were so damaged
Speaker 1: by what happened with the Iraq War and the Bush
Speaker 1: administration and Cheney that now like any sort of step
Speaker 1: of like we're going to another country, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if we're helping or what we're doing, sending troops, no
Speaker 1: matter what, there's such a negative reaction to it that
Speaker 1: that we can't do anything to help these people because
Speaker 1: the American public loses their minds, like we can't see
Speaker 1: beyond what Dick, Cheney and Bush did. And so now
Speaker 1: all these people are basically just gonna die and we can't.
Speaker 1: We're just like literally like tiptoeing around being like should
Speaker 1: we can we Like it's it's actually very insane, how
Speaker 1: literally I mean. It all goes back to fucking piece
Speaker 1: of shit asked the Bush dynasty and Dick Cheney and
Speaker 1: the fucking devils they were have ruined anyone's chance of
Speaker 1: wanting to go into Syria and being like, wait, let's
Speaker 1: go stop this, And it's it's a lot of that
Speaker 1: playing on a bit of racism too, even among people
Speaker 1: on the left, to where this idea of like, well
Speaker 1: but look at Iraq and it's like they're two different
Speaker 1: countries and two completely different groups of people. They're not
Speaker 1: the same country, they're not the same place. And it's
Speaker 1: it's also not the same like why did Iraq go
Speaker 1: so badly? Well, you can kind of trace it back
Speaker 1: to the fact that the day after we conquered it,
Speaker 1: we fired the entire army and put half a million
Speaker 1: men out of work with their guns and they made
Speaker 1: an insurgency. Like a lot of it you can tie
Speaker 1: back to that, Like it's it's number one, the fact
Speaker 1: that like nobody in America has a very nuanced understanding
Speaker 1: of these places or these struggles. Um. And it's like
Speaker 1: one of the things I tried to do in this
Speaker 1: episode is really trace out how the civil war evolved
Speaker 1: UM out of protests into fighting, because one of the
Speaker 1: things I hear a lot when I argue with people
Speaker 1: who are on the left is like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the US was funding the rebels the whole time, and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, dude, Like we eventually started giving them
Speaker 1: some aid and it was too little, too late, and
Speaker 1: it was mostly shitty and small arms, and it was
Speaker 1: like like, yeah, we funded some of the rebel groups, Like,
Speaker 1: but the people started the civil war by wanting to
Speaker 1: not have a dictator murdered them, and they were active
Speaker 1: in the streets four months, fighting and building connections between
Speaker 1: one another and building a revolution. Like and it's fucking
Speaker 1: racist to say that the Civil War only happened because
Speaker 1: the US came in and gave them money. No people
Speaker 1: are able to rise up against their dictators without us.
Speaker 1: They did it in Libya. We just helped them not
Speaker 1: get massacred by Kaddafi's planes. They've done it everywhere. That's
Speaker 1: what people to get upset and be like, no more
Speaker 1: of this ship has nothing to do with us. It's
Speaker 1: the thing where like you pould be like, you know,
Speaker 1: the White Helmets are just like American plants because they've
Speaker 1: received international funding. And it's like any given person who
Speaker 1: has done that job is braver than anyone who has
Speaker 1: made that complaint will ever be like you fucking cowards,
Speaker 1: like accusing them of faking attacks when they are running
Speaker 1: out every and pulling I've seen people do that job,
Speaker 1: pulling corpses from rubble. It's the worst fucking thing I
Speaker 1: can imagine. And fuck you for accusing them of being
Speaker 1: anything but heroes. Like It's I get really heated when
Speaker 1: I talk about this. I mean, what type of person
Speaker 1: goes and does that? You know? It's like it's not
Speaker 1: someone who's here is. It's incredibly frustrating to be like,
Speaker 1: you don't know what these people do every day. You
Speaker 1: can't know what they see for every day, especially since
Speaker 1: most of them and I guess the only dead body
Speaker 1: you've seen is maybe at a funeral. You can't imagine
Speaker 1: what these people are going through, Like you just can't.
Speaker 1: Uh And I I'm so angry at everyone all the
Speaker 1: time because of Syria. It's uh so shout out to
Speaker 1: my Syrian homies. Sorry, the real bastard at the end
Speaker 1: of this episode is is everybody. And I guess that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that that is really telling to me.
Speaker 1: It's like, you look at Barack Obama is a man
Speaker 1: who I have intense disagreements with, but I believe has
Speaker 1: always wanted to do the right thing. But he's also
Speaker 1: a really really smart guy and a fundamentally a scholar,
Speaker 1: and he thinks through everything too much. And Bashar al
Speaker 1: Assad did not. He gambled. He's willing to gamble. Dictators
Speaker 1: usually are because it's the only way they can prosper,
Speaker 1: and Barack Obama was not willing to gamble, and as
Speaker 1: a result, half a million Serrians died. That's what it
Speaker 1: comes down to. And you can say Obama was right
Speaker 1: or wrong, that's your opinion. But this is the reason.
Speaker 1: This is the same basic logic that let Hitler get
Speaker 1: as far as he did. Dictators being willing to do
Speaker 1: the reckless thing and gamble and brave conscience or not brave,
Speaker 1: but conscientious, decent, smart men not being willing to gamble
Speaker 1: and letting them get away with murder, right, yep, which
Speaker 1: is nevill fucking Chamberlain. Yeah, how do you even like
Speaker 1: reconcile any of that? It's like, Wow, he really didn't
Speaker 1: step up because he was fucking thinking it out, like
Speaker 1: thinking of all the ways it could go wrong and
Speaker 1: what would happen, and it's like you can't do anything,
Speaker 1: Like there's nothing, you know, there's nothing. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: incredibly tough, and like it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I do like I would say his failure to respond
Speaker 1: adequately in Syria is the single worst thing that Obama did.
Speaker 1: But if I'm tracing it back, which American I blame
Speaker 1: most for Syria, it's still going to be George W.
Speaker 1: Bush and Dick Cheney, Like you know, they're a team there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't, you know, I don't. I am
Speaker 1: one of those people that will push back a little
Speaker 1: bit and giving too much credit to Cheney and not
Speaker 1: enough to Bush because I think he was a more
Speaker 1: active partner than he a lot of people give him
Speaker 1: credit for. But both of them, I mean, he was
Speaker 1: a fool, but he got to where he was somehow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I ironically having a little bit more of that
Speaker 1: shoot from the hip, gut attitude that Bushhead might have
Speaker 1: been helpful in Syria if like their positions had been reversed.
Speaker 1: But if we never invaded Iraq. Yeah, if only we'd
Speaker 1: picked the right country to invade and not fucked it up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like that's even dumb to say, like
Speaker 1: all of it's dumb. Everything's fucked up. I hope you
Speaker 1: all enjoyed this episode of my Upbeat and Fun podcast.
Speaker 1: You know, it's another reason why I say, uh, currently,
Speaker 1: because we're in such high tensions with Iran. Guess who's
Speaker 1: in bed with Iran? Syria a psycho path. So don't
Speaker 1: go after Iran unless you want, you know, some ally
Speaker 1: heat from like Syria and Russia. It's not great. We're
Speaker 1: not a great place. Let's not funk with the evils.
Speaker 1: You know. This is part of the thing where it's
Speaker 1: like it makes it so hard with like picking a
Speaker 1: press residents, like you want to say, pick not a
Speaker 1: crazy person, but then we get the sanest man who's
Speaker 1: ever been president. I think that's probably is Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: and he's sometimes too careful and people pay the price
Speaker 1: for it. And now we've got a funk. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's certainly having a lunatic in charge is not the
Speaker 1: right thing, because who knows what the funk Trump's gonna do. Um.
Speaker 1: But maybe presidents are a bad idea. Should just have
Speaker 1: like a parliament, like so classically European. Yeah, that'll work.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe so European. They don't have dinner
Speaker 1: to like eleven pm, like so European. That'll fix our problems.
Speaker 1: Or we just make a dog president. It would be funny.
Speaker 1: No war woof, couldn't be worse. Bud, buddy, you're so great,
Speaker 1: you're to do a boy said, you go president, So
Speaker 1: you go president. The dog still has not appointed a
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Or if the dog just makes everyone on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court be dogs. M and then you just
Speaker 1: trained Supreme Court dogstice m. He peed on the lawyer.
Speaker 1: I think that means the case is thrown out. Classic
Speaker 1: move by spot m hmm. Chief Justice Spot spots court.
Speaker 1: Really groundbreaking legal precedent, not in channel, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Literally groundbreaking because he dug a lot of
Speaker 1: holes in the yard of the of the court. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: did you enjoy this very fun episode of Behind the Bastards? Anna?
Speaker 1: Look honestly like you know me, I love me episodes
Speaker 1: about Syria. Oh boy, oh no, it's you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of this um starting from like how it started.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about on our show. UM, a
Speaker 1: lot of the background I did not know, which, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting. Of course, the brand Jelina hanging out
Speaker 1: with them is probably the most shocking thing I've ever
Speaker 1: learned in my life. Um. And you know what a
Speaker 1: second I felt bad saying I hope asma Alissa gets cancer,
Speaker 1: but then it's like, now that she has it, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, no, that's just how karma works. Like, if
Speaker 1: you're a horrible person, we might not be able to
Speaker 1: get to you, but here's praying that some sort of
Speaker 1: natural disease or cause comes for you. Because you don't
Speaker 1: seem to care about human life, So why should we
Speaker 1: care about your human life? You know, like you're not
Speaker 1: you compared to the millions of innocence of like babies, children, mothers, fathers,
Speaker 1: grandparents who have died. Who the fuck are you? You
Speaker 1: don't deserve ship. Yeah, that cancer diagnosis is the most
Speaker 1: uplifting thing about this episode. Yeah, good for you, honey,
Speaker 1: good luck, good luck with that good stupid bitch, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the real dictator. It's like, honey, that's not funny.
Speaker 1: Millions of people are dead, Like, fuck you, you're that's
Speaker 1: not the joke to make when you're haspen is literally
Speaker 1: a dictator. Yeah, but I don't like these pure trash
Speaker 1: ass bitch anyway, you want to plug some plugables? Yeah,
Speaker 1: dropped down zone. Um podcast dictator here Anna, UM. You
Speaker 1: know I have a podcast Ethnically Ambiguous with Green Units.
Speaker 1: Check it out if you like news in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: We have an episode called we Are Syria. When We're
Speaker 1: we talked, it was right after the air strikes happened
Speaker 1: that we kind of break down our feelings and what happened.
Speaker 1: If you want to go check that out, and then
Speaker 1: you know, of course all the other episodes. You know,
Speaker 1: currently we are talking about the year on US tensions situation.
Speaker 1: If you want to listen to that. Um. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can follow me on Twitter at Anna host n A
Speaker 1: N N A H O S S N I E H.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm constantly constantly talking politics and other good
Speaker 1: stuff and you know The Bachelor because that's where my
Speaker 1: interests lie in Middle Eastern politics and the Bachelor. And
Speaker 1: something interesting I noticed recently Robert does not follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter, so I burnt. All right, all right, I'll
Speaker 1: I will correct that bad at social meds and I'm
Speaker 1: mostly just ship post and argument. Yeah yeah, and I
Speaker 1: am a podcast viceroy. I always wanted to be a
Speaker 1: viceroy podcast general. No, I want to be a viceroy
Speaker 1: that seems like more fun, less responsibility, and more than
Speaker 1: Parliament will consider it. We'll let you know what we
Speaker 1: have decided on. Thank you well, Uh podcast Viceroy Robert
Speaker 1: Evans signing off. You can find me on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram at Bastards pod. You can find uh this podcast
Speaker 1: on the web at bond the Bastards dot com. I
Speaker 1: have another podcast called it Could Happen Here about everything
Speaker 1: that happened to Syria if it happened in America, which
Speaker 1: actually part of why I made the show was just
Speaker 1: a backdoor way of trying to make people empathize with
Speaker 1: the horrible things happen against Syria. Um. And also, you
Speaker 1: can find to shirts ont public. Some of them are ours,
Speaker 1: others or not. You can buy whichever ones you would like. Uh, Sophie,
Speaker 1: do I have to say anything else? I do love
Speaker 1: about of you, and I love a d percent of
Speaker 1: the poison room that's sitting behind Anna right now. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I love poison. We all we're all big
Speaker 1: poison stands, all right. Uh, listeners, chill out, enjoy some
Speaker 1: poison of your own, and or don't because that might
Speaker 1: be me inciting you to, uh to do horrible things.
Speaker 1: Don't do horrible things. UH, do good things or at
Speaker 1: least neutral things. Uh. But sometimes being neutral is you
Speaker 1: know what the episode has done. It's over, Go do
Speaker 1: something else.