Syria and the failure of the Western elites

OPINION:

With the disappearance of the Assad regime from Syria last week, the Middle East, shorn of its last secular state, returns again to what it was before the last couple of centuries of combined Anglo and American hegemony — a reservoir of religiosity and tribal preeminence and a standing rebuke to the hyper-rationalism of the Western “Enlightenment.”

More than a century’s worth of effort by the mightiest empires in history failed to impose a way of life on people, nations and tribes who did not and do not want to emulate the United States or, before that, Britain.

Who can blame them? If your preferred way of life has to be exported at the barrel of a gun, what does that say about your way of life? The terrible truth is that the English-speaking world has much of which to be proud, but it has never quite accommodated itself to the fact that some people just are not interested in what it is selling.

The British, who once boasted that the sun never set on their empire, were particularly egregious in this regard, attempting to destroy any social arrangements they deemed unhelpful. Their American cousins have not been much better. If all you knew about the Enlightenment West was that it occasionally sent over soldiers to kill you and your friends, followed by real estate agents to take the land and a handful of missionaries who preached peace, you would be pretty jaded about the experience, too.

There is a lesson here for those who want to learn it. It is telling that upon the fall of the regime in Syria, President-elect Donald Trump immediately sent out an emphatic message that Americans had no stake in this fight. He’s right, of course. We’ve had no stake in any fight in the Middle East ever, but that hasn’t stopped us from sending Americans over there to fight and die for the last quarter century.

It can’t be accidental that Mr. Trump — who represents the individuals and tribes in the United States who wish to be left alone, especially by the bureaucratic regime in Washington — understands the desire of people everywhere to live on their own terms, whether the “elites” agree with those terms or not.

It turns out that the unenlightened — whether in Damascus, Syria, or Damascus, Maryland — want to be free to worship as they wish, live as they wish and be governed as they wish without the overweening presence of authoritarians who insist on managing every aspect of their lives. It is also telling that President Biden’s State Department put out a statement acknowledging that the future of Syria would be decided by the Syrian people; the administration seemed disappointed to be forced to acknowledge that simple fact.

Syria and her neighbors in the Middle East are now free to continue along whatever path they choose. Americans should respect that. In 1776, I’m quite sure our British overlords looked at us the same way some now look at Syria — as a hopeless backwater that is destined to fail without the “help” of its colonizers.

Maybe. Maybe not. But whatever happens next will be in the hands of Syrians, just as America’s fate is in the hands of its citizens.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.