Bye-Bye, Bashar! (Updated)

And the UN Needs a DOGE haircut

By Roger L Simon

As I type this, the Middle East is—guess what?—going up in flames.

Ever hear that before?

Ever not hear it?

This time it’s Syria that is imploding. Their president Bashar Assad, whose wife once graced Vogue in an issue they do their best to hide, at this moment has gone missing. Statues of his despotic father Hafez are being toppled. The regime looks to have gone with it.. Many think this should have happened years ago.

Various entities, some with al Qaeda roots, some ad hoc armies of “reformed” terrorists, some better like the Kurds, are on the march. The Iranians—having lost nearly all their client Hezbollah and having bet billions on Assad—are taking another licking and are currently hightailing it out of Dodge/Damascus. Our supposed NATO allies the Turks—how’d that happen– are trying to cash in under slimey Erdogan. It’s the Sunni and Shia still going at it as they have since the Seventh Century. It’s hard to keep track. The mullahs in Tehran are looking more flimsy than ever, the Iranian people likely the next to erupt. Who would now bet against it?

Much of this can be ascribed to the Trump Effect, which is clearly global, as much as local. Another aspect is Israel successfully taking the offensive on Hezbollah and Iran.

And as the Assad regime disintegrates, Assad himself reportedly fleeing in a Ilyushin-76T cargo plane, for once the Israelis appear to be in the clear, just keeping a watchful eye on the jihadists gunning each other down outside their border when, according to the Times of Israel and other sources, this happened:

“The Israeli military said Saturday evening that it was helping United Nations forces on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights repel an attack by gunmen, near the town of Hader, close to the Israeli border.

“’The IDF is now assisting the UN force to repel the attack,’ the military said.”

Say what? Israel is actually helping the UN?

Considering what the UN has done to Israel, this may be one of the more generous acts of kindness since God saved Noah before the flood. (and Noah was more deserving).

To give you some idea, if you are not already aware, you might want to read Hillel Neuer’s “The Case Against UNRWA” (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) that has the subtitle “How UN schools use our tax money to teach Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews.”

Beyond that there’s “reliable” UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) that has been charged since 1978 with keeping the peace on the Israeli-Lebanon border and preventing Hezbollah terrorists from operating south of the Litani River.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has “10 Things to Know About UNIFIL” that give a good overview of how, as they put it, “UNIFIL’s 10,000 peacekeepers from 48 countries have looked the other way as Iran-backed Hezbollah has grown to more than 45,000 fighters equipped with an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles.”

The Israelis have obviously taken care of many of those fighters and missiles themselves, unfortunately with no help whatsoever from the UN, in fact the reverse in most instances.

The bias against Israel at the UN is so extreme it borders on, actually is, incomprehensible. In only one of a zillion instances UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, adopts around 10 resolutions a year criticizing only Israel. That’s it. Once, in decades, it criticized Syria.

I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.

And yet the Israeli Defense Force is defending UN troops under attack by jihadis.

Who do they think they are, Daniel Penny?

Will the UN learn anything from this as elementary as good versus evil?

Will there be any signs of gratefulness for saving their embattled troops who, if past performance is any indication, would have more than their hands full without the help of the IDF?

No bloody chance. That’s not how the organization operates, as we have known since the days of the infamous Oil-for-Food scam during the Iraq War. It’s always about the money.

So attention turns to Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy and their Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that many of us find exciting and even refreshing.

They must ask:

How much is this sinkhole worth to the American taxpayer?

The $18 billion per annum the US forks over– at last report (2022), probably bigger now–to the UN may not make much of a dent in our ever-mounting national debt but still… it’s a significant number.

Also, it should be noted, according to Google’s AI, “the United States does not charge rent to the United Nations (UN) for the UN’s headquarters because the land and buildings are considered extraterritorial. The UN has sole administration of the UN headquarters, which is located on the eastern shore of Manhattan Island in New York City. The UN and the U.S. government have a treaty agreement that gives the UN headquarters this special status.”

The original thought, I suppose, was to have the UN on our shores to keep an eye on things.

It didn’t work.

Rules, as they say, are meant to be broken.

I bet business-heads like Elon and Vivek could think of dozens of uses for that property that would make a dent in our debt.

Or, just as efficient, a rent of $18 bn/yr seems fair for such an exquisite property with an unparalleled East River view.

But beyond all this, if you’re not in the streets of Damascus right now, these are exciting times. Titanic change is in progress on many fronts, and mostly for the better.

UPDATE: Apparently Israel has moved quickly to destroy Bashar’s strategic weapons that are known to include the chemical ones that Obama pretended he would take care of. (Remember the “red line”?) They were rightly concerned they would fall into the wrong hands. The current leader of the New Syria, —Muhammad al-Jawlani—now appearing on CNN, was a wanted terrorist back in 2017.

First published in American Refugees