Embracing Syria's New President At Our Peril
By Majed El Shafie, OFWI.org
If an Al Qaeda and ISIS warlord overthrew your government, would you want the US President to legitimize them? This week, while meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince, US President Donald Trump welcomed Syria’s new President with open arms and told the world the United States was abandoning its values in global affairs.
For years American and allied forces sacrificed blood and their lives to halt the expansion of the most extreme and perverted view of Islam from spreading. While not perfect, American leadership did a lot of good and the world was a safer place for it.
The same people behind ISIS, driven by the same hateful extremist Islamic ideology, are now back and forming the new government in Syria. Prior to overthrowing the Syrian government to become President, Ahmed al-Sharaa had a $10 million bounty on his head by the US government.
““The same people behind ISIS, driven by the same hateful extremist Islamic ideology, are now back and forming the new government in Syria.””
Since violently taking power in Syria, President al-Sharaa forces have been engaging in revenge killings, which is the politically correct way for saying killing anyone they want who happen to be of a different religious or ethnic group. No justice. No due process. No basic respect for anyone they deem different. Pow Pow. Dead.
While Sharaa has been moving to consolidate his political power and take the reins of what’s left of the Syrian state, revenge killings of the Alawite minority have been taking place, leaving thousands dead. Women are being raped and lawlessness in the streets has led to violence, extortion kiddnappings, and what is left of the Christian minority community enduring killings, violent confrontations, and threats.
Why is the President of the United States lending his legitimacy to President al-Sharaa, who on his death march to power, killed Christians, Yazidis, Druze and any other person in Syria he deemed to be in his way? Al-Sharaa was also part of the buying and selling of Yazidi and other women as sex slaves during the deadly reign of ISIS in the region. The man’s record is that of a brutal and savage terrorist. Not a statesman.
By easing sanctions on Syria, the United States is telling the world that human rights do not matter. Justice does not matter. The world’s worst actors can do as they please so long as they invest a few dollars in America.
We must speak up.
We must speak out.
We must act and demand the leaders elected to represent us act on our shared values.
History has shown us that wars seemingly worlds away have a real impact at home. The same perverted ideology that fueled ISIS, fuels the Hamas perpetrators of October 7, and fueled the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. History tells us that even if you think you are leaving them alone and it's far away, their ideology and the dark forces that fuel it are a threat to global security and no one is immune.
To win this war, and make no mistake, it is a war, we must look to education to change the hearts and minds of the people, while maintaining pressure on those with power through sanctions and other diplomatic means to constrain the worst excesses of their power.
Evil left unchecked is a force we cannot live with. President Trump should learn from the echoes of history that left unchecked, these dark forces will not be contained to what some think is a far away land.
Rev. Majed El Shafie is the President & Founder of One Free World International