Part One: Bashar al Assad: The Eye Doctor Who Murdered a Nation

In Episode 63, Robert is joined by Anna Hossnieh (Ethnically Ambiguous) to discuss Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmm, what's committing my war crimes? I'm Robert Evans hosted
Behind the Bastards, uh, the show where we tell you
everything you don't know about very worst people in all
of history. My guest today is Anna Hosnia. Anna, how
are you doing? Hello? That's my that's my impression of

(00:20):
the bastard we're talking about today. Oh good? Oh that
was that was a solid one. Yeah, we're we're talking
about Bashar al Assad. Did you like my did you
like my themed introduction? Yeah? I did. Actually, that was
really wonderful. Thank you, Thank you. A lot of war
crime stands in the audience today, Uh, now, Anna is yeah,

(00:42):
oh yeah, man, a lot of big fans of war crimes. Uh.
I'm not really sure where this joke is supposed to go.
I guess I can see why you'd be a fan
of a war crime. All right, go on. Weirdly enough,
we're talking about a guy who has a lot of
fans in spite of his war crimes. So what how
do you feel about Bashar al Assad? Um? You know,

(01:04):
if you ever listen ethnically ambigue as the podcast I host,
I talk a lot about how I feel like this
all one I came. It all comes down to bad
parenting and having a small penis that you are ashamed of,
so you take it out on murdering everyone in your country. Yeah. Yeah,
that seems like a credible explanation for his war crimes.

(01:26):
Small penis bad dead. We'll see if you change your
mind at all as we as we go through the
episode and talk about his background. All right, I think
this is probably the hardest episode of the show for
me to write, because I get really angry whenever I
read about or think about Bashar al Assad. And I
got angry enough that I just like got on Twitter
and provoked a fight with a bunch of tankies, which

(01:49):
are which are people on the left who defend any
war criminal who's not American, and it's it's they're very
frustrating people. So that's a weird like subsection of you
pull on the left. Why why would you want to
die on that hill? They love Twitter though, a lot
of them, a lot of them on Twitter. So I

(02:10):
guess I'll start reading from my little scripty scripty dude
here scripted. I thought you just kind of like he
just free bays it off the dom. I've got. I
just write some lines down on my hand and then
talk for I have very small handwriting, so you can
fit about an hour per hand, you know, very like
me Mento, but on bastards. It is because I wake

(02:32):
up every morning forgetting everything about every bad person in history.
Like I couldn't tell you a single thing about Hitler,
just the names in my head. For some reason, it's
a total mystery. But you know, yeah, that's what We're
too familiar. But go ahead. I'm also trying to figure
out who killed my wife. Might have been Hitler. That's Memento, right, dude,

(02:52):
where is my wife? You know? Classic Hitler line. In
the summer of two thousand fifteen, I found myself crossing
the Serbian Hungarian border on foot and walking along what
was then known as the Refugee Trail. That year, more
than a million people, mostly Syrians, fled the blood and
chaos of war in the hope of a better life.

(03:13):
Over the course of several long days, I helped hand
out food and water and advice on where to find
holes in the Hungarian border fence. Through it all, I
interviewed at least a couple of hundred Syrians citizens, men
and women, young and old, anybody who spoke English. They
told me horrible stories of barrel bombs killing multiple members
of their family in the same day, of torture and
regime prisons, of chemical weapons attacks, and the horror of

(03:33):
picking up pieces of their neighbors and hauling them away
in bags after a bombing. I did the thing it's
my job to do, and I wrote about it, and
then I went home and I wrote about other things,
completely unaware that inside of my own country, a sizeable
number of Americans on the left and the right, we're
already hard at work rewriting the story of the Syrians
Civil War into a tale where the dictator but shar
Al Assad was somehow the hero or at least not

(03:55):
the very worst guy involved in the whole thing. Uh,
some of my listeners may have been probably we have
heard variations of that story, especially if you're you're on
the far left. So if you're a fan of my
show and you're you think, but Charlissa, it's an okay, dude,
which is a thing. For some reason, I just asked
that you you listen through this till the end and
maybe maybe learn a couple of things about this fella.

(04:19):
I'm honestly very still stuck on the fact that anyone
would think he's a good guy. That's really crazy to me.
And yeah, I'm going to need more in full on that. Yeah,
it's uh, And I think it's more common to be
a little bit fair than instead of saying he's a
good guy, they'll say that like he's not nearly as
bad as these Lamaster whoever. And it's like, yeah, I mean,

(04:40):
isis is pretty bad, but they didn't kill nearly as
many people as char Elasad, Like, I mean, just from
what I remember talking about on our own show, it's like,
which I'm sure you'll get into, but just like buildings
full of body parts, yeah, just unexplained missing people. There's
a whole genre of pictures from the Syrian Civil War

(05:02):
that's just bags that are are very small, that is
like this is a person, Like this is what's left
after Yeah, anyway. Bihar al Assad was born on September eleventh,
nineteen sixty five, So we're off to a great start
with a great birth date. He was the quintessential middle child,
the third of five children. His father, a dude named
Hafez al Assad, was a commander in the Syrian Air

(05:25):
Force and a powerful man in the Baths political party
that had come to power in Syria in nineteen sixty three.
Now the Boss are a pan Arab quasi socialist party,
although trying to equate both is m directly with any
Western political ideology is a little bit of a fools
game in my opinion. Uh, Bashar's mother, Anissa, came from
a prominent Syrian family, so Bachar grew up with power,

(05:48):
wealth and influence. Uh never never, didn't know that, um,
But he also grew up as a member of a
persecuted minority. The Assad's are an olive white family, which is,
the Oloids are a set active Shia Islam that a
lot of other Muslims consider heretical for reasons that I
don't fully understand. All whites make up about ten percent

(06:08):
of the Syrian population. They were traditionally very poor and oppressed,
and Bashar's dad, Hafez, is one of those dictators who
grew up very, very poor and had to like claw
for everything he got in life, kind of like Saddam Hussein.
Based on my understanding, his family got into power through
a kudata, right, yeah, I mean sort of. It was
a little more gradual than that. So by the time.

(06:30):
But when Bashar was born, Hafez was not in power,
but Hafez was a prominent man, and the bothists were
in power. Um. And because the ola Whites, you know,
it's the same thing in the United States, members of
minority communities, blacks and Hispanics, but also like gay and
trans people serve in the military at a much higher
rate than the general population because it's a route to

(06:50):
not only better economic conditions, but also to like a
societal's acceptance for traditionally persecuted groups. And it was the
same with the Olive whites in pre Bath Syria so well,
the Olio Whites were only about ten percent of the
Syrian population that were really overrepresented in the military. And
so that is part of how the boss Is coup
was successful in sixty three, and Hafez wasn't in charge

(07:12):
at that point, but during the coup he wound up
in a very high position. How you do it, that's
how you do it. So that's where we are right now. Um.
While Bachar was still a muling little infant, his father
became the Syrian defense minister. Now, Hafez was an incredibly smart,
hard fisted political operator, Henry Kissinger considered him a cunning

(07:34):
opponent at the negotiating table, and whatever else you say
about Henry Kissinger that that means something. Uh, you know,
he's negotiated with pretty much everybody who has a Wikipedia
page in the in the twentieth century, like um, Hafez
seized power gradually and the chaos that came after the
disastrous nineteen sixty seven Arab Israeli War and then after

(07:55):
a failed attempt to encourage a coup in Jordan in
nineteen seventy. Haffez's coup at home him is generally considered
to have been bloodless. It's euphemistically known as the corrective movement.
So that's how Hefez comes to power, is like, we
tried a bunch of stuff that didn't work. I'm gonna
make ship work. I'm gonna I'm gonna. I'm gonna fix
this stuff, don't you worry. Yeah, So now Hafez is

(08:17):
in power. Bars like five years old at this point,
so such pretty pretty we Yeah, with such confidence, I
would never get it well with Hafez. I get the
confidence a little bit more because he's this dude who
really did grow up like dirt, poor and had to
like fight for political power and stuff. So you get

(08:38):
why a guy like that, Guy like that doesn't survive
unless he's got that kind of just like gut level confidence.
But he's the only one in this story who worked
for anything, right. Yeah. Now, prior to Heffez, Syria had
suffered under a revolving door of unstable and effective regimes,
beset by constant military and domestic defeats and bungles. Hafez

(09:01):
promised to change all that, but first he promised himself
that he would die as the supreme ruler of Syria.
To do this, he established an intricately interwoven net of
fifteen security agencies, all of them tasked one away or
another with monitoring and crushing dissent both within the government
and within the populace. We will be referring to this
tangled web of secret and not so secret police as

(09:22):
the mukabarat, which I hope I'm pronouncing close to correct. Uh.
That's the Arabic word for intelligence. It's used generally in
a number of Arabic nations to refer to repressive police
state agencies. It's also the specific name of the military
Intelligence Directorate of Syria. But for the purpose of this
episode will be using the mukabra as a broader term

(09:43):
for just like the secret police. You know, that's that's uh.
The people in Iraq called Saddam's police by the same thing.
It's still one of those terms that like, if you
know any iraqis like sence chills up people's spines, just
like hearing that word yeah, it's it's yeah, it's a
it's a bad word. I'd go so far as to say, um, yeah,

(10:05):
I'm pretty sure I'm getting it more or less close
to right, but you know, it's hard to say Arabic stuff.
The only thing. Yeah, Anyway, Fest came to power when
I was about five years old, so virtually his whole
life has been as the son of a man who,
for all intents and purposes, was king of Syria. I
found a good Financial Times article that discusses a book

(10:26):
called The New Lion of Damascus, which was a vaguely
pro a sad book written before the Civil War by
an academic named David Lesh, who will be hearing from later.
In the book quote, the Syrian leader describes his upbringing
as normal, insisting he played soccer with neighborhood children ping
pong with his father and his friends mothers came home
to chat and cook meals with his mother and Missa.

(10:46):
We had two very caring parents, and our happiness derived
from having these two caring parents. Assad tells Lesh. But
to what extent was Bshar telling the truth? And what
did normality mean to him? There was nothing normal about
their life, quips a family friend. The children rarely saw
their father and they were always protected by bodyguards. Abdel
Halim Kadam, the former vice president who resigned in left
Syria in two thousand and five, says, the Assad children

(11:08):
grew up in an atmosphere where they were targets, but
also felt as if they owned the country. So I
got a few conflicting views there about how the Assads
grew up. I know which one I find credible? Which
one the one where he and his brothers and sisters
felt like they owned the country and uh never saw
their dad great parents. Let me tell you shocking that

(11:31):
a dictator, You know, you don't run into a lot
of dictators who were super hands on parents. Yeah, A
great way to get your dictator father's attention is to
um kill everyone, which is one of the weird things. Yeah, yeah,
I mean Assad grew up to kill everyone. Um, they're
not the kind of dictator kids. Like I'll say this

(11:52):
for Hafez, like they're not the word. Well, it's hard
to say because, like you, part of me wants to
say that the worst case scenario for a tater's kids
is like Saddam's son, who was just like raping and
murdering for years, but like you know, he probably never
killed more than maybe a couple of thousand people, like
because he just preferred to rape and murder people with

(12:13):
his own hands. Um, whereas Assad killed a lot more people. Um,
so I guess so like who's chiller, you know, like, yeah,
who's chiller? Who's the cooler dude? Do? Yeah? Do we
go with like Ude Hussein orshar Al Assad? Like you know,
it's really up in the air at this point because

(12:33):
like I doubt us. I doubt al Asad's uh ever
raped anybody at gunpoint, which Ude Hussein did for like breakfast. Um,
but honestly I get but was a little bit more
like a little more uppity. I can imagine I'm being
very high mane and he's like, oh no, I need
to wash my hands, Like I imagine just being very
like like he just cry babing about every little aspect

(12:56):
of his life needing to be exactly how he needs
it to be. So does that, yeah, does that make
him like a worse person than the day who would
like at least if Ude is going to murder some people,
he's going to pick up an a K forty seven
and like shoot them in the face, like from three
ft away because he doesn't give a fuck like we

(13:16):
team Dream yeah, or I mean, are we team Saddam's
parenting or team huff as his parenting Battle of the
Dictator Dad's Yeah. So Assad was a Bashar Al Assad
was a child of the Cold War. He grew up
knowing that he and his people were, you know, one

(13:38):
fairly small player in a game board dominated by the
U S and the U S s r H. He
also saw two Arab Israeli wars as a child, both
of which were disastrous for the Arab side of that equation.
All this had an impact on the growing Assad, but
the most significant historical event of his childhood was probably
his father's bombing of the city of Hamma. Now, this

(13:58):
happened in night at the end of a long and
grinding Sunni rebellion. As a way of ending the fighting
with an exclamation point, Huffez pounded the city flat with
artillery for days, and then sent bulldozers in to flatten
the rubble and anyone buried underneath it. Roughly twenty thousand
human beings were murdered in just a couple of incredibly
bloody days. The Hamma massacre was until recently, the single

(14:20):
deadliest assault by an Arab ruler on his own people
in modern history, beating even the Halabja massacre of Saddam
Hussein Um. A Guardian writer who witnessed some of the
massacre titled his coverage Assad Goes Beyond the Point of
No Return, which would not be the last time a
reporter mistakenly believed that an Assad had gone beyond the
point of no return. Um. Yeah, Like that headline could

(14:46):
be used six hundred more times. Yeah. Yeah, there's been
what three hundred chemical weapons of strikes in the Assad regime.
You could really put that after each one. This has
gotta be introl see control v okay, Yeah, copy past that.
I do feel like as journalists we have to retire
point of no return because it's the same thing with
Trump that he keep doing something and be like, oh this,

(15:07):
there's no coming back from this, and it's like stop
saying that. You don't know, nobody knows. It's almost tempting
them to go further, like, well no, yeah, I feel
like the only time that's ever been justified is when
fucking Hitler shot himself. Then that's it. Yeah, he would,
that's the point in our return. Yeah, okay, fair yeah,
fair use for that title. God, what a way to

(15:29):
go out to be like, oh, I'll just let use off.
It's like, oh my god, yea out here and show
your face. At least Saddam went out like a g
screaming at everybody before they hung him. You know, I
guess I'm on. I'm definitely on team Saddam as opposed
to Team Hitler. But I feel like nobody but Nazis
is ever on team Hitler. So you know, that's a

(15:50):
tough one. I don't know if I'll touch that one.
It's it's really a bad one to weigh into. Whose team. Yeah,
I would, you know, if I had a time machine
picking up these people right before their suicides or executions
and then having them fight to the death in a
steel cage would be pretty good TV. It should be

(16:14):
all of them. And then just throw a dragon in
there too. Yeah, just just like a Komodo dragon too,
one of those ones that just like bites you with
its rotting teeth and so you slowly die over the
course of days. Yeah, just s dom bleeding out from
a Commodo dragon bite for three days. People take bits

(16:34):
tweet at us if you have a UM machine, Yeah,
if you have a time tweeted us, or just come
visit us in your time machine, assuming it also can
travel through uh space as well as time. Yeah, no
judgment on what era you came from your personal business.
I mean probably some judgment like if if you if

(16:57):
if you listening to this like built a time machine
and like eighteen fifty nine instead of like doing something
about slavery, a little bit of judgment. Don't bring your
plague up in here though, yeah, yeah, don't bring your
plague up in here. Uh yeah, or bed bugs either
of those. No cholera please, No thanks on the cholera. Yeah,

(17:19):
we already got plenty of musing like I actually have cholera,
and like I found that very offensive for you to
ask me not to bring my cholera into the situation
cholera pride. Yeah, what color rivet is that? I mean,
it's it's a brown one, right. Yeah. So the Hamma

(17:42):
massacre helped to ensure Hafez al assad uh nearly twenty
more years of uninterrupted rule. It would not be until
two thousand eleven that the Syrian state when next face
serious resistance. But Char was sixteen years old when his
father flattened Hamma. The lesson would have been clear to him,
but he was not at this point, being grew to rule.
That pleasure went to his younger brother Rafat, who was

(18:03):
the heir apparent. Young Bashar's favorite parent was clearly his mother, Anissa.
One Western politician described him as a mama's boy more
than a papa's boy. Now, there's a lot of debate
as to whether or not Assad's mom has been one
of the secretly dominant forces in his regime, but it's
pretty agreed upon that he was a mama's boy up
until her probable death in two thousand sixteen. He was

(18:24):
said to call her multiple times a week. This was
actually something of a running joke in Syrian society. Syrian
internet satirist call him b show or baby Baschar, or
at least they did before he had them all murdered.
That was hilarious until they all died. And now their
body parts exist in small bags. Yeah. Yeah, and now

(18:46):
they are filling small sex. Yeah. When Bashar was nineteen,
his dad had a heart attack and Rafat tried to
seize power. Unfortunately for Rafat, Huffez recovered and sent his
eldest boy into permanent exile for his crimes. But Shar's
older brother, Bassil became their father's next successor. Now Basil
al Assad seems to have been an interesting dude. I

(19:08):
found one Psychology Today article which was written by a
couple of PhDs and makes the case that Bassil's bullying
was a major influence on young Bashar. I don't consider
that article supercredible because it's written like ship and it
doesn't jell with what people who are close to the
family report, but their doctors, so I'll include their opinion
on here. Now, young but Shar does seem to have
had issues with his brother. Um. I'm an Abdul Noor,

(19:31):
who knew U Bashar when he was a young adult,
told Financial Times growing up, Bashar was overshadowed by Bassal
that seemed to be a complex. He didn't have the
charisma of Bassal, who was sporty, was liked by girls,
and was the head of the Syrian Computer Society. I'm
in claims young Bashar was shot. He used to speak,
He used to speak softly, with a low voice. He
never asked about institutions or government affairs. Yeah, yeah, Bashar

(19:54):
was too much of a nerd to be president of
the computer society. Like it's kind of unfair that his
sexy athletic brothers also gets to be the computer guy.
Because that's one thing everyone agrees on is Bassil was
also like the smartest of the Assad boys. Um. He
seems like he really got it all. You know. It's
so interesting like families like that that like um in power,

(20:17):
Like they're so easy, like there's no empathy. That's so
easy for them to just drop people out of their family.
It's like, how dare you try and seize power? You
ain't ever coming back here again. It's like it's your son,
you know. I mean, Momar Kadafi would agree with you,
because Kaddafi had a kid who tried to overthrow him,
who he exiled for a while and then invited back in,

(20:39):
so ground him for a while. I don't know. I
feel like if my son tried to overthrow me and
take over the house, yeah I would. I would exile
my son. Yeah, I would exile him forever. Exiling is
so aggro it's it's pretty grow. But I've always so,

(21:04):
I mean, you and I are going to have an
issue at some point because it's always been a dream
of mine to exile. Uh, somebody, I'm not surprised by that.
So I I really I'm a big, big fan of exiling. Uh.
It's it's an art more than a science. But you know,
I love it. I love the love the craft. Bashar
himself would later claim that his father didn't talk about

(21:26):
work at all with his kids. There was a complete
separation between politics and family relations in our house. My
parents were very keen to make us live as normal
lives as we can. So I don't believe that at all. Yeah,
I mean, you were the son of the of the
king of Syria. Uh. And it's yeah, it does seem
like most of of the people who knew them at

(21:48):
that time said like they I mean, it's it's one
of those things. Maybe they think they were normal because
they don't have any basis for comparison because they grew
up the heirs to the throne of Syria. But yeah,
I see you, Sophie. Sophie's signaling that it's time for
an AD break, and I see her. I was just
trying to finish my sentence. Uh this is this is

(22:09):
Sophie's in a way exiling me for well, I'm actually
going to be exiling all of our listeners to an
AD break. So enjoy, enjoy your exile into the the
green and bountiful land of capitalist products and services. Products.

(22:35):
We're back, We're back. We're talking about bashaw Alissa be
today a b shu b shu. Yeah, little baby Bashar.
If I was him, that would be my like Twitter
handle at It would be amazing to get into Twitter

(22:57):
fights about char Alissade with Bashar Alisa. Baby Bachard, you
fucking loser. He's like, leave me alone, block boy. He
would definitely be a blocker. Yeah yeah. Now, But Shard
did not grow up wanting to be a dictator, or
at least he gave no impression of having that desire.

(23:18):
According to an article in the Atlantic based on interviews
with people who knew him, at the time. Quote, but
Shard did not seek out recognition or popularity. He had
no interest in being in the middle of politics as
his brother did. In his school days. He was perceived
by the Syrian society as a shy, reserved, weak, hesitant
child who did not inherit any of his father or
brother's intelligence and leadership. So WHOA, that's like just reminded

(23:40):
me of The Godfather, like al Pacino's character. How he
I'm not going to be involved in his like mafia
business and then like next thing, you know, he's like
slapping Michelle Fifer around. It's like, yeah, a lot of
people have actually compared him to Michael Corleone. Some people
compare him to Fredo But yeah, yeah, well, I mean
because he kind of was he was the he was
the like like he wasn't really like he was the

(24:01):
heir to a lot of money and stuff, but he
was not the air like he was never considered for power,
like he was literally his dad's like last choice essentially,
and so he didn't really Yeah, we'll get into that
a little bit more later, but that is a really
apt comparison. Now. Basil, meanwhile, was exactly the kind of
kid you'd expect to be a dictator's son. He was

(24:22):
an avid parachutist. He was an infamous ladies man and
a huge facet of nightlife in Damascus. I think so. Yeah,
the pictures I've seen him, he was a reasonably decent
looking dude. Uh. He was a fit, athletic and charismatic.
Pictures of Bassel playing sports and looking fly as hell
worth slathered over many a wall in Syria. Basil owned

(24:43):
a stable of sweet sports cars and torras around town
on a regular basis. He had a person Oh yeah,
he loved driving real fast, which we'll talk about a
little bit more in a second. Uh. He had a
personality cult that rivaled his father's. Uh. Magi Rafizada Raffi's
it a the author of that Atlantic article and a
guy who grew up in Syria around this time, recalled

(25:05):
when I was a student in high school, I would
walk the busy streets of Damascus, Aleppo or Latakia and
find the walls and windows of shops and buildings papered
with posters and photographs of Basil. His images even were
even plastered across cars. But there was not a trace
of Bashar's presence. So it's all about Basil in these days,
all about Basil. Having a good set of like a

(25:28):
good set of hair is like so key to being
a dictator because bashre not a good looking dude. Not
a good looking dude. Like if you, if you have
any like latent bully instincts, you look at a picture
of the kid and you kind of want to give
him a swirly, especially when he had that that little
pencil than mustache. Um, just such a nerd looking kid,

(25:52):
which is weird because Basil was apparently better at computers
to um. Yeah, Now, for what it's worth, it seems
like Basil, i'll assad, was one of the better case
scenarios for a dictator's son. He wasn't a mass rapist
and murderer, or at least not based on what I've read.
I haven't read any allegations like that. It's entirely possible
that he was doing a bunch of terrible ship, but
it's not like it's He's certainly not like Ude Hussein,

(26:14):
where you hear these stories about him machine gunning people
at parties and stuff. Uh, And he seemed to be
more um honest in interviews like in nineteen eighty eight,
Bassel gavem an interview uh that I think he was
telling the truth. Uh quote. We saw father at home,
but he was so busy that three days could go
by without us exchanging a word with him. We never

(26:34):
had breakfaster dinner together, and I don't remember ever having
lunch together as a family, or maybe we did once
or twice when state affairs were involved. As a family,
we used to spend a day or two in Latakia
in the summer, but then too, he used to work
in the office and we didn't get to see much
of him. Like that seems totally totally likely. Uh yeah,
that seems like a credible representation of like growing up

(26:55):
as a kid whose dad was a workaholic, which you know,
Bishar will never admit to. So I don't know. Uh,
Basil seems like it seems like he was as decent
a dude as it's possible to be and be the
son of a brutal dictator who murders twenty people to
make a point. I guess that's how I'll describe him.
But I never knew the guy like any dictator kids. No, no, no, no,

(27:21):
we we never never never worked comps. Weirdly, enough. I
was pin pals with Jaif al Islam, Kadafi's son. We
used to we used to play sudoku over the mail.
But uh, you know that is so you. I've never
heard anything than what you just. I don't, I don't,

(27:41):
I don't. I don't truck with sudoku. I'm not Kiana Reeves, okay,
like any dictator kid. Our sources and how Bashar grew
up are incompleted best. The official party line, at least
is that the Assad children had a modest upbringing. It's
emphasized that Bashar's mother thought this was the right way
to raise children. However modest they're upbringing. But Shar his
siblings lived in almost total privacy. Pictures and reports of

(28:03):
their lives were kept fairly mump, with the obvious exceptions
of Rafat and then Bassel. All the Assad kids went
to college in Syria, which is something of an oddity
among an Arab dictator's children. It's more common for them
to like go to school in Europe or whatever. But
uh Huffez was insistent that they do their college in
uh In country, So Baschar went to medical school as

(28:23):
a young man. According to Ed Schulenberg, Bschar's former supervisor
at the Western Eye Hospital in London. Baschar decided to
become an ophthalmologist and eye doctor after reading a book. Quote.
He read a book about blindness and the treatment of
blindness and I think the psychology about being blind many
years ago, and it impressed him so much that he
thought he wanted to become an eye surgeon now. Bashar

(28:44):
al Assad himself claimed, quote, I like the idea of
working in the humanitarian sector, so medicine was the best
thing to take up. The question that I asked my
father was I would like to be a doctor. What
do you think? He told me, it doesn't matter what
you do. The most important thing is if you succeed
or not. So whatever you do, just make sure that
you succeed. Holy shit, what to turn your child into

(29:06):
a fucking dictator. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter what you do,
just succeed at it. If you're going to be an
eye doctor, you better be the fucking best eye doctor
on in Syria. I don't even know. I don't want to.
I don't want there to be any blind people in
the world an eye doctor. Are you kidding me? Keep
the funk out of here now. Some experts on Syria

(29:30):
and the Assad suspect that char may have had a
different motivation. Dr al Zizer of Tel Aviv University believes
that Bashar's medical ambitions were actually pushed on him by
his father. Quote, one can only assume that Assad, who
himself wanted to be a doctor when he was young,
pushed him in that direction. Um so, I don't know,
like there's three different totally credible, Like all of those

(29:50):
sound very believable to me. Well, I mean, growing up
in a Middle Eastern family, you don't got to tell
me that I was supposed to be a doctor. As
my father said quickly that I need to go to
med school. And I was like, I can't look at blood.
And he was like, you're gonna need to get over that.
I mean you should. You should tell your dad what
I tell my parents, which is that podcasting as the
medicine of the century. You know, that's so true, And

(30:13):
it's funny because like I'm such a dictator of this office.
Now you know you are you are? You are? Go
on before I kill you? You do say that a lot.
We're getting t shirts printed up go on before I
kill you. I'm a podcast dictator. That's fun, Like it's

(30:35):
a fun theme for a podcast. Now, whatever the truth
about why he got into it, But char al Assad
seems to have had a real passion for being an
eye doctor, and from everything I've read, it seems like
he was legitimately good at it. This is not one
of those stories where a dictator's kid becomes like the
head of the sports system like Kadafi's kid and has

(30:56):
like no idea how to do anything. But shar moved
to London and actus medicine. Like, he wasn't under daddy's
arm when he was in London, he was working at
a real hospital and doing real medical work. And he,
from everything I've read it seems to have been really
good at it and seems to have loved it. Um so, yeah,
he was a pretty solid eye doctor. Uh, he adapted

(31:17):
fully to life in the Western world. You want to
guess what his favorite musician is, Leonard Skinner, Phil Collins?
Oh that is that is a clear sign. You know what?
Nothing annoys me more than him? Was it? Like? What
band was Phil Collins? And again, shit, oh boy, now

(31:39):
we're gonna have the band that Peter Gabriel originally was in.
I think. So. I know he's one of the musicians
that uh my mom listens to like and your mom
a classic dictator type. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she is the
gator of Genesis. There we go, fucking Genesis, a band

(32:01):
so bad we forgot it so bad people who liked
it became bad people. Yeah. I hate to say this,
but his second favorite, or at least one of his
other favorite bands, is a legitimately great band, the Electric
Light Orchestra, which which does break my heart a little bit. Well,
I mean, everyone likes LLO like that. Everybody likes the Llo.

(32:21):
But now I have this picture in my head of
Bouchard ordering the carpet bombing of of of Aleppo while
listening to Mr Blue Sky, and it, uh it kills
me a little bit inside, but I know it happened.
I'm going to disregard that thought. Yeah. Now, the young
doctor fell in love with London, and he says that
seeing the West helped him to open his horizons. He

(32:44):
has a lot of positive stuff to say about travel,
which I guess is appropriate because he inadvertently caused millions
of Syrians to travel and see Europe themselves. A little
bit of a really a joke, just a horrible thing
that happened. Uh anyway, Uh, one day, on a foggy
morning in January, Basil Alissat was tearing us through Davascus

(33:05):
in his sports car. Alright, I said he liked driving
fast in his sports car. On the way to the airport,
his car skidded off the road and he crashed at
high speed, dying instantly. Now, yeah, that's the end of Basil. Now,
whenever the air apparent of a dictator, especially a dictator
whose first air apparent had tried to overthrow him, is

(33:25):
killed mysteriously in a car crash, it's natural to be suspicious.
But all the credible sources I found seemed to agree
that this was really just one of those freak accidents
that happens from time to time and changes the world forever.
Sounds like the son of um, a king uh in
a regime, thought he um was invincible. So it does

(33:48):
sound like that himself killed because he, oh, what do
you know, not invincible. Nope. Turns out that if you
crash a sports car with a shitty safety rating at
like a hundred miles and our uh, the same thing
happens to everybody. M mmmmmm. The only one of us
that's invulnerable is Keith Richards and he should have known that.

(34:09):
He should have known that now. That same January day
in nine, Bashar al Assad got a phone call in
his London flat. He was told that his brother had
died and that he was now the successor to Hafez
al Assad, and that he would have to return home
to take up the family business. There's a lot of
debate as to why Hafez didn't pick Bashar's other brother,

(34:30):
Maher to rule instead, since Maher was a lot like
Basil and Bashar had expressed zero interest in ever holding power.
But for whatever reason, Huffez picked Bishara and at this
pla heer the daughter. No. Maher's his other brother, and
he's in charge of like the Syrian Republican Guards. So
he's been like one of the bloodiest military leaders of

(34:51):
the Syrian Civil War. Um. But there's kind of a
mystery among people who knew the family as to a
lot of them had expected that, you know, uh, Huffez
was gonna pick Maher to uh to run the country,
but he went with Bashar for some reason. We don't
we don't really have a clear idea why. At this
point it seemed too many Syrians and to much of
the outside world, almost like this might be the plot

(35:12):
of like an unusually gritty Disney movie. Like you can
kind of see the upbeat version of this, where like
a brutal dictator picks his shy, bashful eye doctors son
to rule in his stead and the kid has to
fly back from his life in London and learn how
to rule. You make a really fun movie with that
premise where he realizes that like he only ever wanted
to be a doctor, and he gives his country back
to its people and establishes a democracy, and he and

(35:33):
his dad fight at first, but then his dad comes
to love freedom and probably writes a skateboard at the end.
I'm imagining this is a nineties movie. Um, it's like
the Goofy movie. Yeah, it's like the Goofy movie but
with like a brutal dictator. Um. Yeah, it's like a
cross between the Goofy movie and that really bad Michael
Caine movie about a dictator who hides out in like

(35:55):
a ten year old girl's house. What what is that? Yeah,
it's this, it's a it's a on premise this like
girl becomes a pinpal with a brutal dictator of like
a Caribbean nation played by Michael Caine, and he gets
overthrown and he like flees and winds up hiding in
her like tool shad. I think dit Dear Dictator, it

(36:15):
should have been a good movie, but it was just
kind of bad. Um. Like you hear Michael Caine playing
like a dictator who's best friends with the little girl.
That seems like it could be a really good movie,
but it was just it was not. It was not
a good movie. And uh, I'm sorry because now people
are gonna want it. People are gonna watch Dear Dictator,
and they're not going to find it very good because
it's not very good. And I'm sad about that. Yeah,

(36:39):
it really is now, according to Financial Times, in the
real world, uh, and not the fake world of the
Disney movie that I invented about this, but the real
one in which hundreds of thousands of human beings have
been killed in the most brutal ways possible. Hafez al
Assad basically tried to remake his nerdy doctor son into
the spitting image of his dead brother Bassel quote. Assad

(37:01):
underwent a crash course in military and political affairs and
a successful image making exercise that would make him palatable
to Syrian society. He inherited Basil's friends, Basil's office in
Mount Cossion, overlooking Damascus, and even the Syrian Computer Society,
a critical tool that would help him create an image
as a man who could bring progress to a country
that seems stuck. In the nineteen seventies, Bachard disappeared from view.

(37:23):
We only started seeing him again in nineteen ninety six,
and he had changed. Even his voice had changed, recalls
Abdel Noir. He was more confident, more muscular in his appearance.
So like made him go away and get a gym membership. Yeah,
it's like it's the male version of that makeover scene
where like the curly haired girl who becomes a princess
gets her hair straightened and stuff. They made him take

(37:45):
his pushups off, and they're like, you're gorgeous. Now you're
really going to kill running this country, literally kill kill.
You're gonna have to literally literally kill more than anyone
in this century. I wonder if they're like, dude, but
char I heard the country said you weren't cute, and
he was like, oh god, yeah, maybe because he's not cute. Yeah,
but I mean, of course he has good hair. It's

(38:08):
not really it's got that. It's like, I mean, who
knows how real it is. Maybe he lost some of
it and it's hair plugs. Now that statement alone is
probably gonna get me killed by bachar Ela side. But like,
oh yeah, no, he's got a strike cruiser heading to
your house right now. Like I heard she said I
had hair plugs and she's dead. I mean he has
a full set of hair I'm assuming is real. So

(38:30):
that's usually that's enough. Yeah, it's it's it's I just
don't notice his hair like It's one of those things
we'll say on this podcast if a if a brutal
dictator is hot, like Saddam Hussein, good looking young man,
fucking Joseph Stalin, good looking young guy. Hitler always super
weird looking. But yeah, you know Hitler, dude, you have

(38:52):
to you have to be honest about the hotness of
terrible people. It's otherwise what are your standards? And you know,
but Charli's odd as a not in the hotter knot category.
I'm sorry, it's just that's the hill I'll die on.
He's not a good set of hair, but a face
that looks like an ass crack. Yeah, face that looks
like an ass crack ass crack face being another one

(39:16):
of his popular nicknames. As the nineteen nineties near their end,
Hafez al Assad was increasingly sick and clearly nearing death,
he began filling Damascus in other cities with posters of
Bashar al Assad labeled Hope, which is not unlike an
Obama campaign poster. Shepherd Fairy got the idea, Yes, Shepherd.
Shepherd Fairy is a famed Hafez al Assad stand really

(39:39):
a big fan of his marketing uh prowess. While Hafez
battled leukemia, diabetes and a shitty heart, he trained his
son and stocked the heads of his security and intelligence
agencies with men he could trustman one of his head
spies was a guy who was picked to sell Baschar
as the hope of Syria. He did this by making
deals with businessmen who wanted more opportunity. He's for financial

(40:00):
gain then the nation's socialist structure would allow, according to
rue La Kleef of the Financial Times, but charl Assad
became a vociferous critic of bureaucratic corruption, and those he
recommended were placed in key positions in government. It was
during this period that I first met him in Damascus,
a few months before his father died. He was casual
and inquisitive, particularly interested in whether living abroad had deluded
my Arab routes. He spoke about the scourage of corruption

(40:23):
and serious economic stagnation, and was sympathetic to the cause
of an outspoken businessman who was being harassed by the
regime for his political and anti corruption views. It was
impossible to know whether he was sincere, so I don't know,
late nineties, but he's saying the right things, you know,
which one of Kadafi's kids was sort of doing the

(40:44):
same thing where he would he got famous for, Like
I think it was site actually UH where he got
famous for, like criticizing the Kaddafi regime to the international
press while he was the heir to the regime. UH.
And some people thought he was a real reformer. But
like it's become increasingly obvious three time that like, no,
he was just he knew his dad was going to
die eventually and wanted to be set up to be

(41:06):
in charge and the game, playing the long game. It
seems like I don't know if he if Bishar started
out being like, oh, I could be a good leader
and then just went full psycho or if he was, um,
just full psycho, Like I don't get it because it
sounds like a decent person. But then like you know,

(41:27):
just in the Michael Corleone way of like what what
tipped him over the edge? Like was it just his
father being like this is how it needs to be.
You need to be strong and not weak, Like you
need to stand up to your people and I don't know,
like cut their heads off if they don't listen to you,
like I don't. I mean, I guess that's why it's
so secretive. We don't know, but like, yeah, nobody, nobody

(41:50):
really knows the answer to that question. I Mean, one
of my theories is just that like there's a lot
of people walking around who could be who could murder
millions if you put them the position where their continued
comfort was was dependent upon them maintaining in power of
a regime like this. Yeah, you know, I actually now
that I realized that, like I've always said, I should

(42:11):
never be in power because I would take a like
a bribe within seconds, I'm like, yeah, sure, what do
you know? Nobody should be in power. That's that's really
the lesson of guys like Charlie, because if he just
stated an ophthalmologist probably would have just helped people have
better eyes, probably would have done that for decades and
it would have been fine. Power is a hell of
a drug, man, It's the worst. And I'm I'm a

(42:33):
big pro drug guy, but not power. That's the only
drug that I think the d e A ought to
go after. Yeah, that's me. I'm always like, if that's
what the d IT was for, I would be pro
d e A. If they were just like busting guys
who were power tripping, Like, sorry, sir, no, you're clearly
way too high on your own supply. Uh literally a
group in the d A that's like the power dripping dude,

(42:55):
because we're coming for you. The day after Trump gets elected,
they arrest all of America. Uh, like you guys are
you guys are dealing power to a vulnerable man like
he clearly can't handle this. Our presidents arrested for just
power tripping way to no, no, no, I mean you'd
have to bust us all for dealing. You know, we
sold him the power. If you want to get high

(43:19):
at fuck uh, consider getting highest fun on the products
and services that support this program and or show that
was a good That was a good segue, right, Sylvie
loved it beautiful, all right, products, We're back skis. I

(43:41):
say skis now sometimes because I'm a cool I'm a
cool dude. Because he loved to ski. Man, I've heard no,
I actually don't think anyone should ski, dude, Robert, Come on, man,
you don't have to hide it comes everyone sending photoshop
photos Robert's You know, it's funny you say that, because

(44:03):
when I have a bad day, the only thing that
calms me down is watching hours of ski fails on
you You just type that on YouTube and it's people
getting horribly injured. But there's ski fails and bass jumping
fails are like I spent I wonder if most of
those people are dead, like sucker, and then we just
don't no, because like like I spent all week this

(44:28):
week watching god knows how many videos of barrel bombs
detonating in Syrian cities and like horrible things happening to
people who did nothing. If you if you're going out
there to go basse jumping, you know you might funk
up and kill yourself. So like, I feel like it's
fine for me to watch videos of people hurting themselves
if if they're putting themselves in that situation. I wouldn't
watch videos of people getting hit by cars and laugh.

(44:50):
That's horrible. But if you're going into that situation and
and that like that's something like you've crashing and hurting
yourself is an integral part of the sport, then it's
fine for me to laugh at it. I wouldn't. I
wouldn't laugh at somebody getting hurt playing golf because that's
not part of the sport. If you get hit in
the face of a club playing golf, that's just a

(45:11):
horrible accident. But it is. It is a little bit funny, right,
My My principles are an ironclad. Uh, we're all a
little bit of a monster. This is why I shouldn't
be a dictator, because I would make people ski just
to watch them hurt themselves. That would be funny. You're like,
all right, set up the skis, set up the skis,

(45:32):
bury the bananas and snow. Yes, yes, just put a
tree in the middle of the path. It's fine. It
was clear from the beginning that the young despot in
waiting was insecure. One of his friends, Walbash was being groomed,
later said quote. In his early years, he was learning
on the job and he wasn't confident. He spoke about
some of his father's aids as enemies, and he didn't

(45:53):
have his own advisors. The security people would tell him
it would be a threat to him because they wanted
to control him. So, but shars kind of a paranoid,
scared guy. There's one story I heard from a guy
who interviewed him who like took out his microphone and
Charlotte flinched away from him because he like the microphone
looked just enough like a gun that he like freaked
out because he was just so high strung and paranoid. Um.

(46:15):
So you you'll hear that a lot, that he was
like incredibly high strung and paranoid and like scared all
the time. Um. It does really seem like he didn't
want the job at least at first, just because the
risk of getting murdered was so high. He'd rather be
back in London listening to E. L O and cutting
open eyes us Christ. That's the feeling you get. Hafez

(46:38):
al Assad died on June tenth two thousand, His son
assumed power shortly thereafter. This was actually forbidden by the
Syrian constitution, which required presidents to be at least forty,
but the constitution was quickly amended to allow thirty four
year olds to serve, which was but Shar's age, that's handy,
very nice. Family runs everything. Yeah, yeah, why even have

(47:00):
constitution if like, come on, Hafez, don't don't play that bullshit.
But Char gave an inaugural speech that was everything you'd
want to hear from the new dictator who was replacing
the old dictator. He said it was time to modernize Syria,
to open up the economy to new businesses and new ideas,
and to institute a raft of political reforms that would
allow political parties and previously unheard of levels of dissent,

(47:22):
maybe even something that vaguely approached freedom of speech. His
inaugural speech promised democracy, transparency and touted the desperate need
for constructive criticism and creative thinking. And to back that up,
it even included criticisms of Hafez al Assad's regime. The
international media obligingly ate this up. I found an article
published the day after his inauguration by Mid East Realities.

(47:45):
It was titled Bashar al Assad. They say he's a
gentle man. Okay, okay, prop prop propaganda, prop prop prop
ganda um quote. He's a thirty five year old media
shy ophthalmologist who loves Phil Collins, speaks fluent English and

(48:06):
is in no rush to get married, and expresses a
keen interest in Israeli high tech. Although he was never
the favorite son, Bashar Asad next week will be declared
heir to his father Hafez. Sounds a little bit like
TM like like fucking Perez. Hilton wrote this. Yeah. What
occurred next has been dubbed by some as the Damascus Spring,

(48:26):
which is accurate and that it did not last very long.
Political prisoners were freed, European advisers were brought in to
help perform the government. Young technology minded Syrians who happened
to be friends with Bashar Whill brought into exciting new
positions within the regime. For the first time, Syria's new
ruler allowed his people to access the Internet such as
it existed at the turn of the millennium. New political

(48:47):
parties were allowed to form, and liberal intellectuals were allowed
to form political discussion groups and even published some literature.
The months immediately after Assad's inauguration were proved to be
the absolute high point of Syrian civil liberties, according to
Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma's Middle East Study
Center quote, of course, it didn't take more than a
few weeks before people were demanding regime change because the

(49:09):
regime was so corrupt. It's stunk. The whole thing stunk,
so any kind of critique had to lead to regime change. Basically,
if you start picking at the problems in Syrian society,
all of them come back to the fact that an
incredibly corrupt criminal regime isn't charge so like you really
can't allow criticism. Sorry, this just back to the Tinder

(49:31):
profile thing. If was on Tinder, he would probably have
every woman murdered who swiped no on him. Yeah, I
mean absolutely could I think that would be punishable by death?
Yeah I could. I could imagine. I can imagine about
half of the men on tender being dictators if you
follow that she rates Dogs account on Twitter, where it's

(49:54):
just like women getting threatened with murder by guys they
turned down after it a bad date, like fucking boy,
I believe that exists, but I feel like for my
own sanity, I should not check it out. You don't
need to. But I think there's a lot of people
out there, a lot of men, some women, I'm sure too,
but a lot of men who, if they had an
air force would uh would absolutely bomb a lot of people. Um.

(50:17):
That's why no one should have an air force except
for that that that air force pilot who drew the
sky dick of Washington. That guy, that guy gets an
air force, he knows what to do with him. Yeah.
About six months into the Damascus Spring, in January of
two thousand one, Serious Information Minister declared the idea of
civil society to be an American term. President Assad warrant

(50:40):
the Reformist movement quote. When the consequences of an action
affect the stability of the homeland, there are two possibilities.
Either the perpetrator is a foreign agent acting on behalf
of an outside power, or else he is a simple
person acting unintentionally. But in both cases a service is
being done to the country's enemies, and consequently both are
dealt with in a similar fashion, irrespective of their intentions

(51:01):
or motives. So anyone who is attacking the regime in
any way, is either a foreigner trying to bring us
down or a dumb person. But I have to deal
with both foreign spies and dumb people the same way.
Pay attention to that reasoning. Yeah, that reasoning will come
back a little bit later in this time now. A

(51:22):
couple of months later, Bishar imprisoned ten members of a
Syria is extremely milk toast political opposition. A lot of
these were like the people he'd freed at the start
of the Damascus Spring. This started a trend of serious
president reimprisoning all the people he'd freed. One year after
assuming power, he approved a new press law which gave
the government total control over everything printed in Syria, from
magazines to pamphlets. Many experts now say the whole idea

(51:45):
of the Damascus Spring was never more than a pr
move to gain international support for the regime in its
early days. Others say it was undertaken earnestly, but resistance
from old hardliners within the Syrian government forced Bishar to
back off on his youthful dreams. It's hard to say
where the truth lies, but there was evidence from the
earliest days of Bashar's presidency that he was going to
be just as brutal as his dearly departed dad. One

(52:07):
of his first moves was to send his security forces
into the city of Latakia, which was a stronghold for
his exiled brother Rifat, who for some reason was allowed
to remain the vice president despite being kicked out of
the country forever. But Shar had many of her fat
supporters disappeared. He also deposed the Prime Minister Mahmoud al
Swabi and charged him with corruption, which was probably true,

(52:28):
but no true reform Mahmood than for any other high
ranking Syrian official. Mahmood committed suicide in his cell within
weeks of Bashar's inauguration, So you know, starting things off
with some murder. Okay, it's foreshadowing, almost as if it's foreshadowing,
but I don't. I don't foreshadow sub Texas for cowards.

(52:51):
The Namascus Spring was short lived, but this American September
of two thousand one would go on to have a
much longer lasting impact on Bashar's regime. Like all Arab leaders,
in the wake of nine eleven, he was forced to
make some difficult decisions, but Shar had to thread the
needle of working with the US just enough to not
get regime changed himself, while also standing up to America
enough to maintain support at home, and most importantly, doing

(53:14):
his part to ensure that Iraq was enough of a
debacle that Bush wouldn't have the political capital to funk
with the Syrian regime. But char al Assad was by
all accounts, very successful in this, and two dozen four
the Bush administration started to slam him hard for allowing
his country to basically act as a highway for foreign
fighters to enter Iraq. This was somewhat overblown because only

(53:34):
five to ten percent of Iraqs and surgeons were foreign fighters.
But those foreign fighters tended to be the ones who
actually killed the most people. They were the most of
the suicide bombers and the really dedicated fighters, so some
reason to be pissed at that, and he definitely led
a lot of people through. By the time w came
down really hard on Syria, he had his hands so
full with the disastrous occupation of Iraq that there was

(53:56):
really funk all he could do to Bashar al Assad,
which made a sad feel safe saying things like this quote,
some see me is bad, Some see me is good.
We don't actually care what terms they use. It is
not right to apply this term to Syria. I mean,
look at the relationship that Syria has with the rest
of the world. If you have good relations with most
of the world, you are not a rogue state just
because the United States says you are, which, you know,

(54:20):
given the timing, not totally unfair, but anyway, Bashard's regime did,
of course, allow sealfest insurgents to pass through the country.
These Sunni extremists gradually built up a base of support
in parts of Syria. More than a decade later, they
would wind up forming the foundation of the terrorist group ISIS.
At the time, letting them fester seem like a smart
way for Bashar to attack America while maintaining plausible deniability.

(54:43):
Assad was also willing to work with the United States, though,
particularly when it came to exercising one of his regime's
great strengths, its ability to torture the funk out of people.
See in the wake of World War Two, an S
s Man Alois Brunner immigrated to Syria in an effort
to escape being hung for his many, many, many war crimes.
Now Brunner was the number one aid and the very

(55:04):
best man of Adolf Eichmann, the single dude most responsible
for executing the Holocaust. Brunner himself was wanted for his
direct complicity in the murder of a hundred and thirty
thousand Jews, but Shard's father, Hafez al Assad, welcomed Brunner
into the Syrian intelligence establishment with open arms. Now they
later fell out, and Brunner did fortunately die horribly in

(55:26):
a Syrian prison, but for years he was an integral
part in building up serious intelligence infrastructure, and most importantly,
he taught the Syrian government how to torture people. So
that's cool, literal Nazi helping helping build the bones of
your torture department. Now, where this gets even more fucked
up is because the Syrian intelligence agencies learned Brunner's lessons

(55:49):
about how to torture people well enough that the CIA
eventually came to them for help. A lot has been
written about the CIA's own terrible torture programs, but most
people don't know that we outsourced awful lot, probably even
the majority of the torturing we did to other nations.
Syria was considered the very best of these Robert Baer,
a former CIA agent who worked extensively in the Middle East,

(56:09):
later told the Guardian quote, if you want a serious interrogation,
you send a prisoner to Jordan's. If you want them tortured,
you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear,
never to see them again, you send them to Egypt.
So Syria is the CIA is like these guys, like
we can torture, Like not trying to be humble here.
We can torture some dudes. But these guys, they're the Kareem,

(56:31):
Like the CIA is the Kareem Abdul Jabbar of torture,
but like Sirias, the Michael Jordan's. That's so fucking crazy.
Why would you ever that ship out loud? Wait, Robert
bat Yeah, he's been very critical of a lot of
aspects of the intelligence. Like I think he's trying to
be a decent person and tell people about things they
need to know about. I thought he was. It felt

(56:54):
like he was like bragging, Like let me tell you,
I think he's very sort of cogent le and honestly
talking to the Guardian about like this is how the
torture program works. You go to Syria, if you want
people to like, I'm glad he said it. Someone needs
to like. I'm not gonna say everything Robert Bear has
done in his career has been fine and above board,

(57:14):
but I'm glad that information is out there. Oh, it
gets worse. The U S would regularly send people that
apprehended to Syria with lists of questions for the interrogators
to work through while they brutally tortured our captives. One
of these people was Maher are Are, a Syrian and
Canadian citizen, on his way home to Canada after a
vacation in Syria. In two thousand two, Maher was detained

(57:36):
by US authorities at JFK Airport under charges of being brown.
Mayer was not a terrorist, but the U S Intelligence
agencies thought he might be, so they sent him over
to Syria. Here's hell. A US judge later summarized what
happened to him quote. During his first twelve days in
Syrian detention, are Are was interrogated for eighteen hours per
day and was physically and psychologically tortured. He was beaten

(57:58):
on his palms hips and low, we're back with a
two inch thick electric cable. His captors also used their
fists to beat him on his stomach, his face, in
the back of his neck. He was subjected to excruciating
pain and pleaded with his captors to stop, but they
would not. He was placed in a room where he
could hear the screams of other detainees being tortured, and
was told that he too would be placed in a
spine breaking chair, hung upside down an attire for beatings,

(58:21):
and subjected to electric shocks to lessen his exposure to
the torture. Or are falsely confessed, among other things, to
having trained with terrorists and Afghanistan, even though he had
never been to Afghanistan and had never been involved in
terrorist activity. Cool so cool. We Uh, that's one of
those things. It's both like if you on the US,

(58:42):
if you're like a patriotic American who gets like two
up your own ass about how bad these Arab dictators are,
like our government was happy to use them to torture people,
But also like if you're a leftist getting to uppity
about Bashar al Assad being an anti imperialist, he was
fine to torture people for the CIA. Fuck all of them, like,

(59:03):
fuck all of them, well, I mean just getting picked
up for being brown is just you know, yeah, the
fuck yeah, it's it's all very frustrating. Over the early odds,
Bishar gradually grew into his role as supreme ruler of Syria.
He allowed the US to forces Yeah, there we go,
there's our boy. Uh. He allowed the US to forces

(59:25):
soldiers out of their years long occupation of Lebanon, something
he felt he should have received more international gratitude for doing.
In two thousand six, Hezbollah, a group heavily supported by
the Syrian government, went to war with Israel. It did
not go well, but Hezbollah survived, which was widely seen
as a victory. U Bashar saw this a proof that
his regime was now safe. If America and Israel could

(59:47):
not take out Hezbollah, they surely would not be able
to remove him from power. This wound up being a
completely accurate guess. Uh. David Lesh, a professor of Middle
East history who met with Bishard dozens of times during
this period, recalls his evolution quote in May two thousand seven,
amid Bashar's reelection and a referendum to another seven year term,
I noticed something in him that I had not detected before,

(01:00:08):
self satisfaction. Maybe this is inevitable in a neo patrimonial
authoritarian state, and maybe he was getting his due after
such a tough ride. But Bashar has been a very
unpretentious leader, even self deprecating. Despite being surrounded by very
dangerous circumstances, he never seemed to take himself too seriously. Indeed,
one time I asked him to talk about his greatest
accomplishments to date, and he responded that perhaps we should

(01:00:29):
spend more time on his biggest failures. He is not
a commanding figure at first glance. Soft spoken, gregarious, with
a childlike laugh, he does not fit the typical profile
of a dictator. This was even the case when he
ran unopposed in a referendum. Visiting a polling station, I
observed that each voter had to check the yes or
no box in public amid a band playing and people
singing pro Bishar tuns. It would be an intrepid voter

(01:00:50):
who would check no, especially with security personnel, no doubt
watching closely. The ba Shar posters draped over almost every
standing structure and out of every window, and the I
love bisha are in English and Arabic pens pendance and
billboards belied his issuing of such cultish popular behavior to date.
But Shar understood that the vote to re elect him
was not an accurate barometer of his real standing in

(01:01:11):
the country. He said it was more important to look
at turnout rates for voters, as those who did not
vote were more than likely to have voted no. According
to Syrian estimates, the voter turnout rate was still a
very favorable response for Bashar. I'm so stuck on how
they just described him self deprecating. You know, Lesha is

(01:01:32):
an interesting figure because he wrote a very pro Bichard
book before the Civil War, and then after the Civil
War wrote some really anti Bashar stuff like came around
to be like Okay, no, this guy is a monster
and and has been one of the more useful figures
in trying to analyze the question you asked earlier, like
was he always a monster? Like how did this this
like happen? Like what was the switch? It sounds like
the way that guy described him, he's like a real

(01:01:54):
Jekyl and Hide character, Like there's literally there's literally a
stuff the uh called Bashar al Assad jekyl and Hide
or something like yeah, like no, like it's it's what
you're saying is like really valid because a lot of
people have had these same sort of realizations. Um, there's
enough hild like giggle, it's like the fun. Yeah, but

(01:02:16):
there's enough stories about him that paint him in that
light for me to think, Okay, well they're probably not.
They have no reason to lie because like Lesha's you know,
it's been pretty pretty decent about like, yeah, I got
him wrong and stuff like either it was a facade
he deliberately put up, or a guy like that is
perfectly capable of killing half a million people. Yeah, you know,

(01:02:41):
you kind of pick which one you want to believe,
But one of the two seems to be the case now.
But Charol Assad was optimistic about his ability to keep
a sodding. During the Obama administration, US foreign policy and
in public will had turned hard away from intervention. The
new president had promised to withdraw troop from Iraq. Senator
John Carey was sent to Damascus to meet with Bihar

(01:03:03):
and restart Syrian Israeli peace negotiations. Over the next few years,
Carrie and Assad hung out a lot, speaking regularly on
the telephone. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie also became friends.
With the Assads. This was reveal your face. What Yeah,
you didn't call that one, did you? What the fuck? Oh?

(01:03:27):
You are about to get what the funk here? Um?
This next bit is quite quite the ride. Wait what year? This?
This is two thousand, like eleven? That is the fuck,
brand Jelina, Dude, I hope Bascher broke them up. I
hope so too. I hope so too, and I hope

(01:03:48):
that uh he provided no emotional support when they were
going through that. Yeah now brand Alina's uh friendship with
the Assad was revealed in a February two thousand eleven
Vogue article titled A Rose in the Desert about Ozma
al Assad Bashar's wife. Oh the fucking pros you're about

(01:04:10):
to hear and oh it's bad quote. When Angelina Jolie
came with Brad Pitt for the United Nations in two
thousand nine, she was impressed by the First Lady's efforts
to encourage empowerment among Iraqi and Palestinian refugees, but alarmed
by the Assad's idea of safety. My husband was driving
ass All to lunch, says Ozma al Asad, and out

(01:04:31):
of the corner of my eye, I could see Brad
Pitt was fidgeting. I turned around and asked, is anything wrong?
Where's your security? Asked Pitt? So I started teasing him.
See that old woman on the street, that's one of them,
and that old guy crossing the road that's the other one.
They both laugh. The President joins in on the punchline.
Brad Pitt wanted to send his security guards here to
come and get some training in that. In that funny,

(01:04:56):
I can all fuck themselves. I I hate everybody in
that story. That's the worst thing in that old lady.
It's like, are you fucking kidding me? You're gonna murder
all these people suits, Like all of these people will
be dead from barrel bombs in like a year and
a half now. The whole article was filled with fawning

(01:05:19):
praise for sirious first Lady. In case that excerpt doesn't
give you a clear idea of the tone, here's the
opening paragraph, fucking strap in on a quote. Yea asm
Alissad is glamorous, young, and very chic, the freshest and
most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the

(01:05:40):
coutra and bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power, but aliberate
lack of adornment. She's a rare combination, a thin, long
limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with
cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her the element of light
in a country full of shadow zones. She is the
first Lady of Syria. How you doing there? I know

(01:06:06):
that is Is this article still online? No? No, I
think I think the I think they should have left
it up so they could be eternally shamed. There are
copies of it, and I will link you to the
way Back Machine archive because people should read it and
throw shame on Vogue for the rest of time. That

(01:06:27):
is such a dangerous description of a human being who
has made who's basically involved in some monstrous city. That
is the journalistic equivalent of getting blackout drunk and then
driving a truck down the main thoroughfare of town like that.
That's like morally equivalent. The reason that I hope, honestly,

(01:06:49):
if I saw Brad Pitt and he looked like ship
and he was like, yeah, I'm just not going through
a good time, I'd be like, yeah, you should never
go through a good time ever again. Fucking couple. Yeah, yeah,
gross and it gets grosser. The Vogue article praise Syria
for being the safest country in the Middle East. In

(01:07:09):
August two thou eleven, The Hill Reports reported that lobbying
firm Brown Lloyd James had been paid five thousand dollars
a month by the Syrian regime to publish and manage
that Vogue article. So that makes sense. The puff piece
ended with a few paragraphs about the Assads celebrating Christmas
in Damascus. I think you'll find this very heartwarming, Anna quote.

(01:07:32):
Two hundred children dressed variously as elves, reindeers, or candy
canes share the stage with members of the National Orchestra
who are done up as elves. The show becomes a
full on songfest, with the elves and reindeer and candy
cames giving all their hallelujah and joy to the world.
The carols slide into a more serpentine rhythm. An Arabic
rap group takes over, and then it's back to Broadway mode.

(01:07:53):
The President whispers, all of these styles belong to our culture.
This is how you fight extremism through art. Breast bells
are handed out. Now we're all singing jingle bell rock.
Audience members shaking their bell, singing, crying and laughing. This
is the diversity you want to see in the Middle East,
says the president, ringing his bell. This is how you

(01:08:13):
can have peace. I'm sorry, Okay, let's die first, He says.
All these styles are from Syrian. Well, I mean Syria
has like it's got Christians and it has you know,
Arabs rapping and stuff. That he was trying to say that,
like all of these religions are part of our culture
and like, you know, we made that broadway. If if

(01:08:37):
he had actually opened up Syria and not murdered hundreds
of thousands of people, it would be a heartwarming story.
But you know, on January twelve, less than one year
and exactly one Christmas after the publication of that Vogue article,
Syrian regime forces shot a hundred and two people dead
in protests across the country. They shot ninety eight more

(01:08:58):
people dead on January. On February four, two thousand twelve,
almost exactly a year after that Vogue article, Bashar al
Assad ordered his artillery to fire indiscriminately at the city
of Halmes, killing more than four hundred civilians in a
single bloody day. Now we're getting a little bit ahead
of ourselves. On part two, we'll talk about the Arab
Spring and how Bashar's regime went from playing it openness

(01:09:19):
to murdering hundreds of thousands of people. For now, I
want to note that Vogue eventually pulled their profile of
Ozma al Assad. In an interview with The Atlantic, the
Stories editor, a guy named Chris Knudson, said, quote, we
felt that a personal interview with Sirius first Lady would
hold strong interest for our readers. We thought we could
open up that very closed world a little bit. Are

(01:09:40):
you fucking kidding me? Yeah? You funk off man, I
have an idea. Suck my dick. Sorry I don't you know,
but you fuck you. The closest thing that article gets
to like acknowledging the horribly dark side of the Syrian
regime is by saying it there are shadow zones and Syria.

(01:10:02):
But it only mentioned shadow zones to talk about how
pretty Ozma Allissada is so doesn't really count. It's like, Wow,
she's so gorgeous around all these body parts. She looks
so pretty next to these Macabra police torturing people. God,
look at her, compared to like that, like severed head.
Isn't she Gorges super good next to this pile of limbs?

(01:10:25):
Oh my god. Everyone involved in that article should take
a strong, hard look at themselves in the mirror. Yeah,
they really ought to. Now, Anna, you feel like plugging
your plugables? I feel like dying. Uh. You know you
can find me Anna host me on Twitter A and

(01:10:48):
and A H O S S and I E h.
I will be tweeting NonStop and Angelina and Brad asking
to explain themselves. Uh. And you can also listen to
my podcast with sharn you Nez. We host a podcast.
They're called Ethnically Ambiguous. Check it outsall Middle Eastern news
and politics and hey, you know, maybe well we'll get
in depth on how to get Angelina and Brad on

(01:11:11):
the show and corner them. Yeah, oh man, that could
be our new podcast, is just cornering Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie and making them feel bad. I do wonder
if he ever got his bodyguards out there to train,
and if they're all psycho killers. Now yeah, yeah, I
hope so, I hope. I hope for Brad's sake he did,

(01:11:33):
because we are going to be throwing some rotten food
at him, Um, that is the plan. So I'm Robert Evans.
You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay.
You can find this podcast on Twinstagram's the the both
the social meds at at Bastard's pod. You can find
us on the web at behind the Bastards dot com.

(01:11:53):
I have another podcast called it Could Happen Here, which
is about what if a civil war but in America?
And it's also a real bummer like this podcast. So
if you like being bummed out, maybe you like it.
Let me let me guess Angelina is running like a
Confederate army. Now, yes, yes, yes, Angelina Julie head of

(01:12:14):
the neo Confederate forces. That is so her like. It's
the obvious man. Yeah. Could you imagine a tabloid headline
being like Angelina in charge of the Gate Army were
like tabloid such lies? Also T shirts ke public Behind
the Bastards design me a go on or I'll kill

(01:12:37):
you shut Yeah. Yeah, we need to get the cash podcast,
Dictator podcast, Dictator shirt Daniel play me off. I'm not
hearing anybody playing me off. I don't know the fill
in your own music in your head. Uh and go
do something decides to listen to this podcast because it's over.