Hoda Kotb (5:51)
Oh, my God. What is not going on in Syria? We're going to start off with some video. So let's go ahead and play some of this for the audience. I'm going to talk over it. While it is just stunning scenes with the fall of Damascus to these quote unquote rebels. We'll tell you about those rebels in a little bit. But you can literally see, you know, scenes reminiscent of the fall of Baghdad, the destruction of Assad statues, both Bashar al Assad and his own father who ruled the country for some 50 odd years. The most shocking scenes really are some of these that have been coming out of the secret and historic prison that was in Damascus that housed a lot of these political prisoners, you know, small children, lots of women, men, who have been locked in these cells for what, some odd years now. I saw some reports that some of them literally didn't even know what a smartphone was. Crystal. That's how long they've been locked up. Yeah, if you think the civil war's been going on since 2012, maybe even with the brutal regime, a lot of these people have been housed in There for a long time. Some eyes also open for Austin Tice, the American citizen. The US Government does believe he is alive and he was being held by the Assad regime. So we're hoping that he's returned sometime soon. This apparently, is a bunch of rebels trying to figure out how to operate a helicopter. But here we have Al Jelani, the leader of hts, the new presumptive leader, I guess, of Damascus, not of Syria, giving a speech, talking about, quote, there's no house in Syria. The war is knocked down on. Praise be to God. Today you are recovering, God willing, thank God. Mr. Jelani is literally a wanted terrorist by the United States government and that at one point, we're offering a $10 million reward for his capture. His own history is a little bit shocking. And really from step, step is just failure of US Policy after failure of a policy. This is a man who is radicalized by the second intifada, becomes a committed jihadist, goes to fight in Iraq. He is held in the infamous kind of basically jihadi university prison by United States forces. In 2003 and 2004, he's released. He joins Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq. There's eventually some drama, and he splits off and goes to Syria. And he's been one of the most committed leaders of the. The Al Qaeda offshoot in Syria. Now, you know, the defenders, quote, unquote, will say, oh, well, he's distanced himself from Al Qaeda. He's actually purged some of the elements of that. We'll see. It really does remain. But, I mean, the truth is, if you look at this man's history, he has been a committed jihadist who's been fighting either US Forces, the West, or, frankly, even some of the religious minorities inside of Syria now for over a decade. So, yes, this is the final conclusion, it seems, of the Syrian Civil War. Some 14 years, brutal civil war. Hundreds of thousands are dead. But there is no indication that this is it, right? I mean, there are still so many different religious minorities in Syria. You have the Kurdish faction, the SDF. You have 10% of the country which is Christian. You have the Druze population as well. Damascus itself, where, look, you could say a lot of things about Assad, but it actually was genuinely kind of diverse, quote, unquote. A lot of those people did support the Assad regime. Nobody knows now what's gonna happen. It's some indications in Aleppo that they haven't cracked down on religious minorities yet. We don't know. But there's gonna be no cheering Today on this show because. And I am a little heartened by this, at the very least, there is a heavy amount of realism I have seen, at least in some analysis, even at the mainstream level, Crystal, where people are like, did we. Is this a good thing? Did we win? Is this a celebration of U.S. policy? And don't brainwash yourself. Yes, this war, a lot of it was fought by Syrians. A lot of it was fought by foreigners. A lot of it was funded by foreign dollars, including our foreign dollars. And President Biden's statement, which we'll get to in a little bit, is a full on celebration. But I am at least heartened by the incoming Vice President elect and a few others being like, are we sure that this is a good thing? You know, this may actually end up being like the fall of Gaddafi and unleashing hell for this country for another 14 years.
