WEBVTT - Part One: Bashar al Assad: The Eye Doctor Who Murdered a Nation 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:07.160 Hmm, what's committing my war crimes? I'm Robert Evans hosted 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:09.480 Behind the Bastards, uh, the show where we tell you 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:12.080 everything you don't know about very worst people in all 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:16.560 of history. My guest today is Anna Hosnia. Anna, how 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.760 are you doing? Hello? That's my that's my impression of 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:24.200 the bastard we're talking about today. Oh good? Oh that 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:27.160 was that was a solid one. Yeah, we're we're talking 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:30.000 about Bashar al Assad. Did you like my did you 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:32.600 like my themed introduction? Yeah? I did. Actually, that was 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:36.440 really wonderful. Thank you, Thank you. A lot of war 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:42.800 crime stands in the audience today, Uh, now, Anna is yeah, 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:47.440 oh yeah, man, a lot of big fans of war crimes. Uh. 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:49.559 I'm not really sure where this joke is supposed to go. 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:51.919 I guess I can see why you'd be a fan 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:56.160 of a war crime. All right, go on. Weirdly enough, 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:58.000 we're talking about a guy who has a lot of 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:02.200 fans in spite of his war crimes. So what how 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:04.920 do you feel about Bashar al Assad? Um? You know, 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.640 if you ever listen ethnically ambigue as the podcast I host, 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:10.280 I talk a lot about how I feel like this 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:13.720 all one I came. It all comes down to bad 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:18.959 parenting and having a small penis that you are ashamed of, 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:23.240 so you take it out on murdering everyone in your country. Yeah. Yeah, 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:26.600 that seems like a credible explanation for his war crimes. 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:28.680 Small penis bad dead. We'll see if you change your 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:30.880 mind at all as we as we go through the 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:35.160 episode and talk about his background. All right, I think 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:37.480 this is probably the hardest episode of the show for 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:39.920 me to write, because I get really angry whenever I 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:43.319 read about or think about Bashar al Assad. And I 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:46.160 got angry enough that I just like got on Twitter 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:49.760 and provoked a fight with a bunch of tankies, which 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.200 are which are people on the left who defend any 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:56.400 war criminal who's not American, and it's it's they're very 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:00.080 frustrating people. So that's a weird like subsection of you 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:03.880 pull on the left. Why why would you want to 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.400 die on that hill? They love Twitter though, a lot 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.520 of them, a lot of them on Twitter. So I 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:14.280 guess I'll start reading from my little scripty scripty dude 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.519 here scripted. I thought you just kind of like he 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:20.320 just free bays it off the dom. I've got. I 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:22.720 just write some lines down on my hand and then 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:25.440 talk for I have very small handwriting, so you can 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:28.160 fit about an hour per hand, you know, very like 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:32.359 me Mento, but on bastards. It is because I wake 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.959 up every morning forgetting everything about every bad person in history. 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:37.959 Like I couldn't tell you a single thing about Hitler, 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:40.760 just the names in my head. For some reason, it's 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.799 a total mystery. But you know, yeah, that's what We're 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.400 too familiar. But go ahead. I'm also trying to figure 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:52.600 out who killed my wife. Might have been Hitler. That's Memento, right, dude, 0:02:52.600 --> 0:03:00.160 where is my wife? You know? Classic Hitler line. In 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:02.760 the summer of two thousand fifteen, I found myself crossing 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.600 the Serbian Hungarian border on foot and walking along what 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.200 was then known as the Refugee Trail. That year, more 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.639 than a million people, mostly Syrians, fled the blood and 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:12.919 chaos of war in the hope of a better life. 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:15.160 Over the course of several long days, I helped hand 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:16.959 out food and water and advice on where to find 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.720 holes in the Hungarian border fence. Through it all, I 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.680 interviewed at least a couple of hundred Syrians citizens, men 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:25.440 and women, young and old, anybody who spoke English. They 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:28.480 told me horrible stories of barrel bombs killing multiple members 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:30.640 of their family in the same day, of torture and 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:33.480 regime prisons, of chemical weapons attacks, and the horror of 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:35.680 picking up pieces of their neighbors and hauling them away 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.280 in bags after a bombing. I did the thing it's 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:39.960 my job to do, and I wrote about it, and 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:41.800 then I went home and I wrote about other things, 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:45.160 completely unaware that inside of my own country, a sizeable 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:47.360 number of Americans on the left and the right, we're 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:49.840 already hard at work rewriting the story of the Syrians 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.440 Civil War into a tale where the dictator but shar 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.080 Al Assad was somehow the hero or at least not 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:58.280 the very worst guy involved in the whole thing. Uh, 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:00.280 some of my listeners may have been probably we have 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:03.320 heard variations of that story, especially if you're you're on 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:05.720 the far left. So if you're a fan of my 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.840 show and you're you think, but Charlissa, it's an okay, dude, 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:12.600 which is a thing. For some reason, I just asked 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:14.920 that you you listen through this till the end and 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.480 maybe maybe learn a couple of things about this fella. 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:22.920 I'm honestly very still stuck on the fact that anyone 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.080 would think he's a good guy. That's really crazy to me. 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:30.440 And yeah, I'm going to need more in full on that. Yeah, 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:32.760 it's uh, And I think it's more common to be 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:34.719 a little bit fair than instead of saying he's a 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:36.760 good guy, they'll say that like he's not nearly as 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:40.040 bad as these Lamaster whoever. And it's like, yeah, I mean, 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:43.560 isis is pretty bad, but they didn't kill nearly as 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:48.000 many people as char Elasad, Like, I mean, just from 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.120 what I remember talking about on our own show, it's like, 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:53.400 which I'm sure you'll get into, but just like buildings 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:59.760 full of body parts, yeah, just unexplained missing people. There's 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:02.240 a whole genre of pictures from the Syrian Civil War 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:06.240 that's just bags that are are very small, that is 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:08.320 like this is a person, Like this is what's left 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.800 after Yeah, anyway. Bihar al Assad was born on September eleventh, 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.119 nineteen sixty five, So we're off to a great start 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:19.200 with a great birth date. He was the quintessential middle child, 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.200 the third of five children. His father, a dude named 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.160 Hafez al Assad, was a commander in the Syrian Air 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:27.880 Force and a powerful man in the Baths political party 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:30.440 that had come to power in Syria in nineteen sixty three. 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.640 Now the Boss are a pan Arab quasi socialist party, 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.279 although trying to equate both is m directly with any 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.359 Western political ideology is a little bit of a fools 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:44.360 game in my opinion. Uh, Bashar's mother, Anissa, came from 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:48.040 a prominent Syrian family, so Bachar grew up with power, 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:52.360 wealth and influence. Uh never never, didn't know that, um, 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:54.800 But he also grew up as a member of a 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:58.919 persecuted minority. The Assad's are an olive white family, which is, 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:01.839 the Oloids are a set active Shia Islam that a 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.760 lot of other Muslims consider heretical for reasons that I 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:08.120 don't fully understand. All whites make up about ten percent 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:11.719 of the Syrian population. They were traditionally very poor and oppressed, 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.080 and Bashar's dad, Hafez, is one of those dictators who 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.080 grew up very, very poor and had to like claw 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:19.480 for everything he got in life, kind of like Saddam Hussein. 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:23.240 Based on my understanding, his family got into power through 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:27.919 a kudata, right, yeah, I mean sort of. It was 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:30.000 a little more gradual than that. So by the time. 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:32.920 But when Bashar was born, Hafez was not in power, 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.680 but Hafez was a prominent man, and the bothists were 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.440 in power. Um. And because the ola Whites, you know, 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:41.680 it's the same thing in the United States, members of 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.159 minority communities, blacks and Hispanics, but also like gay and 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.040 trans people serve in the military at a much higher 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:50.599 rate than the general population because it's a route to 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:53.919 not only better economic conditions, but also to like a 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:57.600 societal's acceptance for traditionally persecuted groups. And it was the 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:00.280 same with the Olive whites in pre Bath Syria so well, 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:01.880 the Olio Whites were only about ten percent of the 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:06.120 Syrian population that were really overrepresented in the military. And 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.400 so that is part of how the boss Is coup 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.960 was successful in sixty three, and Hafez wasn't in charge 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:15.440 at that point, but during the coup he wound up 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:19.120 in a very high position. How you do it, that's 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.480 how you do it. So that's where we are right now. Um. 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.440 While Bachar was still a muling little infant, his father 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:29.880 became the Syrian defense minister. Now, Hafez was an incredibly smart, 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:34.400 hard fisted political operator, Henry Kissinger considered him a cunning 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.120 opponent at the negotiating table, and whatever else you say 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.760 about Henry Kissinger that that means something. Uh, you know, 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.920 he's negotiated with pretty much everybody who has a Wikipedia 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:49.520 page in the in the twentieth century, like um, Hafez 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:51.960 seized power gradually and the chaos that came after the 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:55.200 disastrous nineteen sixty seven Arab Israeli War and then after 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:57.400 a failed attempt to encourage a coup in Jordan in 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.040 nineteen seventy. Haffez's coup at home him is generally considered 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.920 to have been bloodless. It's euphemistically known as the corrective movement. 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:09.000 So that's how Hefez comes to power, is like, we 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:11.160 tried a bunch of stuff that didn't work. I'm gonna 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:13.480 make ship work. I'm gonna I'm gonna. I'm gonna fix 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:17.080 this stuff, don't you worry. Yeah, So now Hafez is 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.040 in power. Bars like five years old at this point, 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:25.800 so such pretty pretty we Yeah, with such confidence, I 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.520 would never get it well with Hafez. I get the 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:31.640 confidence a little bit more because he's this dude who 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.079 really did grow up like dirt, poor and had to 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:38.319 like fight for political power and stuff. So you get 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:40.600 why a guy like that, Guy like that doesn't survive 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:44.160 unless he's got that kind of just like gut level confidence. 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:47.280 But he's the only one in this story who worked 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:53.920 for anything, right. Yeah. Now, prior to Heffez, Syria had 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.679 suffered under a revolving door of unstable and effective regimes, 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.160 beset by constant military and domestic defeats and bungles. Hafez 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.320 promised to change all that, but first he promised himself 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.280 that he would die as the supreme ruler of Syria. 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:10.240 To do this, he established an intricately interwoven net of 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:13.599 fifteen security agencies, all of them tasked one away or 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:17.080 another with monitoring and crushing dissent both within the government 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:19.960 and within the populace. We will be referring to this 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:22.719 tangled web of secret and not so secret police as 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:27.480 the mukabarat, which I hope I'm pronouncing close to correct. Uh. 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:30.800 That's the Arabic word for intelligence. It's used generally in 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.319 a number of Arabic nations to refer to repressive police 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:37.200 state agencies. It's also the specific name of the military 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:40.200 Intelligence Directorate of Syria. But for the purpose of this 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:43.600 episode will be using the mukabra as a broader term 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.560 for just like the secret police. You know, that's that's uh. 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:49.520 The people in Iraq called Saddam's police by the same thing. 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:51.720 It's still one of those terms that like, if you 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:55.040 know any iraqis like sence chills up people's spines, just 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:59.200 like hearing that word yeah, it's it's yeah, it's a 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:05.280 it's a bad word. I'd go so far as to say, um, yeah, 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:07.640 I'm pretty sure I'm getting it more or less close 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:11.640 to right, but you know, it's hard to say Arabic stuff. 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.600 The only thing. Yeah, Anyway, Fest came to power when 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:18.520 I was about five years old, so virtually his whole 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:20.360 life has been as the son of a man who, 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.200 for all intents and purposes, was king of Syria. I 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:26.160 found a good Financial Times article that discusses a book 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.520 called The New Lion of Damascus, which was a vaguely 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:32.200 pro a sad book written before the Civil War by 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:34.920 an academic named David Lesh, who will be hearing from later. 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:38.520 In the book quote, the Syrian leader describes his upbringing 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:42.040 as normal, insisting he played soccer with neighborhood children ping 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.319 pong with his father and his friends mothers came home 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:46.400 to chat and cook meals with his mother and Missa. 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:49.400 We had two very caring parents, and our happiness derived 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:52.400 from having these two caring parents. Assad tells Lesh. But 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:54.760 to what extent was Bshar telling the truth? And what 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:57.680 did normality mean to him? There was nothing normal about 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.240 their life, quips a family friend. The children rarely saw 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.559 their father and they were always protected by bodyguards. Abdel 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:06.679 Halim Kadam, the former vice president who resigned in left 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:08.880 Syria in two thousand and five, says, the Assad children 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.000 grew up in an atmosphere where they were targets, but 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:13.800 also felt as if they owned the country. So I 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.400 got a few conflicting views there about how the Assads 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:19.400 grew up. I know which one I find credible? Which 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:22.600 one the one where he and his brothers and sisters 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.840 felt like they owned the country and uh never saw 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:31.000 their dad great parents. Let me tell you shocking that 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:32.960 a dictator, You know, you don't run into a lot 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:36.760 of dictators who were super hands on parents. Yeah, A 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:39.640 great way to get your dictator father's attention is to 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:46.439 um kill everyone, which is one of the weird things. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:50.080 I mean Assad grew up to kill everyone. Um, they're 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.600 not the kind of dictator kids. Like I'll say this 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.280 for Hafez, like they're not the word. Well, it's hard 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:58.400 to say because, like you, part of me wants to 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:00.720 say that the worst case scenario for a tater's kids 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.400 is like Saddam's son, who was just like raping and 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:07.199 murdering for years, but like you know, he probably never 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.960 killed more than maybe a couple of thousand people, like 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:13.840 because he just preferred to rape and murder people with 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:19.560 his own hands. Um, whereas Assad killed a lot more people. Um, 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:22.440 so I guess so like who's chiller, you know, like, yeah, 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:26.960 who's chiller? Who's the cooler dude? Do? Yeah? Do we 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:30.960 go with like Ude Hussein orshar Al Assad? Like you know, 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.880 it's really up in the air at this point because 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:38.040 like I doubt us. I doubt al Asad's uh ever 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:42.679 raped anybody at gunpoint, which Ude Hussein did for like breakfast. Um, 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:45.520 but honestly I get but was a little bit more 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:47.360 like a little more uppity. I can imagine I'm being 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:48.840 very high mane and he's like, oh no, I need 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.439 to wash my hands, Like I imagine just being very 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:56.120 like like he just cry babing about every little aspect 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.640 of his life needing to be exactly how he needs 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:01.079 it to be. So does that, yeah, does that make 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:05.040 him like a worse person than the day who would 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.079 like at least if Ude is going to murder some people, 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:08.960 he's going to pick up an a K forty seven 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.760 and like shoot them in the face, like from three 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:16.880 ft away because he doesn't give a fuck like we 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:23.559 team Dream yeah, or I mean, are we team Saddam's 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:29.000 parenting or team huff as his parenting Battle of the 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:34.120 Dictator Dad's Yeah. So Assad was a Bashar Al Assad 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:36.160 was a child of the Cold War. He grew up 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.400 knowing that he and his people were, you know, one 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.000 fairly small player in a game board dominated by the 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.080 U S and the U S s r H. He 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:46.160 also saw two Arab Israeli wars as a child, both 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:48.920 of which were disastrous for the Arab side of that equation. 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:51.640 All this had an impact on the growing Assad, but 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:55.120 the most significant historical event of his childhood was probably 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.760 his father's bombing of the city of Hamma. Now, this 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:01.120 happened in night at the end of a long and 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.200 grinding Sunni rebellion. As a way of ending the fighting 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:07.000 with an exclamation point, Huffez pounded the city flat with 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:09.959 artillery for days, and then sent bulldozers in to flatten 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:13.720 the rubble and anyone buried underneath it. Roughly twenty thousand 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.719 human beings were murdered in just a couple of incredibly 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.600 bloody days. The Hamma massacre was until recently, the single 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.400 deadliest assault by an Arab ruler on his own people 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:27.000 in modern history, beating even the Halabja massacre of Saddam 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.440 Hussein Um. A Guardian writer who witnessed some of the 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.880 massacre titled his coverage Assad Goes Beyond the Point of 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:37.080 No Return, which would not be the last time a 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:40.320 reporter mistakenly believed that an Assad had gone beyond the 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:46.280 point of no return. Um. Yeah, Like that headline could 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:50.440 be used six hundred more times. Yeah. Yeah, there's been 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.280 what three hundred chemical weapons of strikes in the Assad regime. 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:55.320 You could really put that after each one. This has 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:59.320 gotta be introl see control v okay, Yeah, copy past that. 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:03.720 I do feel like as journalists we have to retire 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:05.600 point of no return because it's the same thing with 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:07.680 Trump that he keep doing something and be like, oh this, 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:09.840 there's no coming back from this, and it's like stop 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:13.600 saying that. You don't know, nobody knows. It's almost tempting 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:17.760 them to go further, like, well no, yeah, I feel 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:20.880 like the only time that's ever been justified is when 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:23.320 fucking Hitler shot himself. Then that's it. Yeah, he would, 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:27.040 that's the point in our return. Yeah, okay, fair yeah, 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:29.800 fair use for that title. God, what a way to 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.040 go out to be like, oh, I'll just let use off. 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:36.440 It's like, oh my god, yea out here and show 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.160 your face. At least Saddam went out like a g 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:42.200 screaming at everybody before they hung him. You know, I 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:44.920 guess I'm on. I'm definitely on team Saddam as opposed 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:47.880 to Team Hitler. But I feel like nobody but Nazis 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:50.680 is ever on team Hitler. So you know, that's a 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:52.400 tough one. I don't know if I'll touch that one. 0:15:54.000 --> 0:16:02.160 It's it's really a bad one to weigh into. Whose team. Yeah, 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:04.640 I would, you know, if I had a time machine 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:08.120 picking up these people right before their suicides or executions 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:09.680 and then having them fight to the death in a 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:14.560 steel cage would be pretty good TV. It should be 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.280 all of them. And then just throw a dragon in 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:22.320 there too. Yeah, just just like a Komodo dragon too, 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:24.200 one of those ones that just like bites you with 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.720 its rotting teeth and so you slowly die over the 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:31.080 course of days. Yeah, just s dom bleeding out from 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:34.560 a Commodo dragon bite for three days. People take bits 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:39.440 tweet at us if you have a UM machine, Yeah, 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:41.800 if you have a time tweeted us, or just come 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.680 visit us in your time machine, assuming it also can 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:49.680 travel through uh space as well as time. Yeah, no 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.480 judgment on what era you came from your personal business. 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:57.280 I mean probably some judgment like if if you if 0:16:57.360 --> 0:16:59.720 if you listening to this like built a time machine 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:04.119 and like eighteen fifty nine instead of like doing something 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:06.679 about slavery, a little bit of judgment. Don't bring your 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:09.560 plague up in here though, yeah, yeah, don't bring your 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.720 plague up in here. Uh yeah, or bed bugs either 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:19.560 of those. No cholera please, No thanks on the cholera. Yeah, 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.159 we already got plenty of musing like I actually have cholera, 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:24.040 and like I found that very offensive for you to 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:26.080 ask me not to bring my cholera into the situation 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:33.760 cholera pride. Yeah, what color rivet is that? I mean, 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:42.320 it's it's a brown one, right. Yeah. So the Hamma 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:46.040 massacre helped to ensure Hafez al assad uh nearly twenty 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:48.879 more years of uninterrupted rule. It would not be until 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:51.600 two thousand eleven that the Syrian state when next face 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:55.280 serious resistance. But Char was sixteen years old when his 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:58.160 father flattened Hamma. The lesson would have been clear to him, 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:00.720 but he was not at this point, being grew to rule. 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:03.879 That pleasure went to his younger brother Rafat, who was 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:08.040 the heir apparent. Young Bashar's favorite parent was clearly his mother, Anissa. 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:11.439 One Western politician described him as a mama's boy more 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:14.320 than a papa's boy. Now, there's a lot of debate 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:16.439 as to whether or not Assad's mom has been one 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:19.480 of the secretly dominant forces in his regime, but it's 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.359 pretty agreed upon that he was a mama's boy up 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:24.760 until her probable death in two thousand sixteen. He was 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.199 said to call her multiple times a week. This was 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.600 actually something of a running joke in Syrian society. Syrian 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:34.200 internet satirist call him b show or baby Baschar, or 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:36.679 at least they did before he had them all murdered. 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:43.200 That was hilarious until they all died. And now their 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:46.480 body parts exist in small bags. Yeah. Yeah, and now 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:50.600 they are filling small sex. Yeah. When Bashar was nineteen, 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:52.879 his dad had a heart attack and Rafat tried to 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.639 seize power. Unfortunately for Rafat, Huffez recovered and sent his 0:18:56.720 --> 0:19:00.440 eldest boy into permanent exile for his crimes. But Shar's 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:04.880 older brother, Bassil became their father's next successor. Now Basil 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.960 al Assad seems to have been an interesting dude. I 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.600 found one Psychology Today article which was written by a 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.400 couple of PhDs and makes the case that Bassil's bullying 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.760 was a major influence on young Bashar. I don't consider 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:19.480 that article supercredible because it's written like ship and it 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:21.119 doesn't jell with what people who are close to the 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:24.320 family report, but their doctors, so I'll include their opinion 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.080 on here. Now, young but Shar does seem to have 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:31.040 had issues with his brother. Um. I'm an Abdul Noor, 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:33.399 who knew U Bashar when he was a young adult, 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:37.240 told Financial Times growing up, Bashar was overshadowed by Bassal 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:39.240 that seemed to be a complex. He didn't have the 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:41.840 charisma of Bassal, who was sporty, was liked by girls, 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:44.480 and was the head of the Syrian Computer Society. I'm 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:47.159 in claims young Bashar was shot. He used to speak, 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:49.919 He used to speak softly, with a low voice. He 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:53.879 never asked about institutions or government affairs. Yeah, yeah, Bashar 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:56.840 was too much of a nerd to be president of 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.760 the computer society. Like it's kind of unfair that his 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.200 sexy athletic brothers also gets to be the computer guy. 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:05.960 Because that's one thing everyone agrees on is Bassil was 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.520 also like the smartest of the Assad boys. Um. He 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:12.240 seems like he really got it all. You know. It's 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:16.919 so interesting like families like that that like um in power, 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:20.280 Like they're so easy, like there's no empathy. That's so 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:22.960 easy for them to just drop people out of their family. 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:24.919 It's like, how dare you try and seize power? You 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.320 ain't ever coming back here again. It's like it's your son, 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.560 you know. I mean, Momar Kadafi would agree with you, 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.760 because Kaddafi had a kid who tried to overthrow him, 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:39.000 who he exiled for a while and then invited back in, 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:45.040 so ground him for a while. I don't know. I 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.199 feel like if my son tried to overthrow me and 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:53.120 take over the house, yeah I would. I would exile 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:56.800 my son. Yeah, I would exile him forever. Exiling is 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:04.640 so aggro it's it's pretty grow. But I've always so, 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:06.639 I mean, you and I are going to have an 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:08.560 issue at some point because it's always been a dream 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.119 of mine to exile. Uh, somebody, I'm not surprised by that. 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:16.960 So I I really I'm a big, big fan of exiling. Uh. 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:19.800 It's it's an art more than a science. But you know, 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:24.240 I love it. I love the love the craft. Bashar 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:26.760 himself would later claim that his father didn't talk about 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.120 work at all with his kids. There was a complete 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:32.199 separation between politics and family relations in our house. My 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:34.480 parents were very keen to make us live as normal 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:39.800 lives as we can. So I don't believe that at all. Yeah, 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:41.960 I mean, you were the son of the of the 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:45.440 king of Syria. Uh. And it's yeah, it does seem 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:48.520 like most of of the people who knew them at 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:51.159 that time said like they I mean, it's it's one 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:53.200 of those things. Maybe they think they were normal because 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:55.520