The rapid fall of the oppressive Assad regime after a prolonged civil war has elicited a variety of reactions. One such measured response expresses “hope that the process of power transition be carried out in a manner aligned with the aspirations of the Syrian people, paving [a] path for the establishment of an independent […] government.”

A more jubilant take argues that “the fall of a brutal dictator is rare enough that we should take the opportunity to celebrate it and pay tribute to those who brought it about.”

Indicative of the bizarre parallel motives that this war has created, the Taliban issued the former statement and neoconservative Bill Kristol the latter. Kristol fails to mention that among those “who brought it about” were America’s enemies during the Global War on Terror (GWOT), specifically that the new governing authority of post-Assad Syria is Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist organization and offshoot of Al-Qaeda.

This irony, however, has not been lost on foreign policy dissidents, most of whom have warned for years that in attempting to oust the Assad regime, the U.S. was making common cause with its enemies from the GWOT. The bifurcated domestic responses to the ouster of the Assad regime and subsequent developments are the latest example of an elite/​public divide on U.S. foreign policy and competing visions for America’s role in the world.

The foreign policy class has largely downplayed the moral complexities of the Syrian civil war and has narrativized these latest developments in an ahistorical vacuum. Foreign policy critics, however, and especially veterans, have viewed developments in Syria with skepticism, if not alarm.

Among them was Vice-President-elect (and Iraq War veteran) Senator J.D. Vance, who noted that “[m]any of ‘the rebels’ are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they’ve moderated. Time will tell.”

This gulf in narrative understanding threatens to undermine further public confidence in American foreign policy and the institutions that implement it.

The crux of official government responses and commentators like Kristol has been to play up the liberatory outcome of Assad’s ouster while downplaying the strange bedfellows and contradictory geopolitics that led to this moment. True to neoconservative form, Kristol ahistorically cast these events as an example of “the arc of the moral universe [bending] toward justice,” a bastardization, of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil rights dictum.

Similarly, while Kristol makes no mention of the jihadist elements within the anti-Assad coalition, he internationalizes their efforts and praises “the Ukrainians and Israelis,” who, in his telling, “bent that arc over the last couple of years.”

Rather than view the new political reality in Syria as one fraught with dangers to be kept at arm’s length, Kristol asserts that “we have national interests at stake in Syria.” Among them, Kristol asserts, are “regional interests that would be furthered by having a peaceful, non-terror-friendly government in Syria” and the “further weakening [of] Iran and Hezbollah.”

He does not treat his readers to an argument as to how “regional interests” align with American interests. Instead, Kristol dismisses President-elect Trump’s pledge of noninvolvement as “foolishness.”

In Washington, policymakers from lame-duck President Joe Biden to members of Congress, such as Senator Tim Kaine, have signaled a willingness to work with Syria’s new jihadist government. Senator Kaine said he is “open” to the idea, but efforts have “to be based upon the performance of this group.”