While it is much too early to tell what will happen in Syria, the initial signs are encouraging. Unlike nearly any other Arab civil war, reconciliation is given a priority over vengeance. An effort is being made to bring all parts of Syrian society together. While there is no doubt it will be a distinctly Islamic society, al-Julani seems to understand that Syria has enough religious and ethnic diversity that the "one size fits all" model we see in most of the Islamic world will not work. The Russians have abandoned their naval and airbase, removing the Kremlin's meddling in a delicate situation. //

In his Farewell Address, Washington left us with this warning.

In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. //

Lord Palmerston treats the same subject in a much pithier quote, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

I fear that many on the right have fallen into the trap of seeing American and Muslim relations through the lens of 9/11, and they are willing to see the change of government in Syria as the creation of yet another terrorist breeding ground. Indeed, on social media, some of the accounts most adamantly against US support for Ukraine and so-called "forever wars" by the "neocons" are also in favor of doing nothing to influence the outcome in Syria because of 9/11 and the 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan that they decry.

The initial moves of al-Julani seem to be focused on keeping much of the same multicultural tolerance of the Assad regime without, so far as we can see right now, the terror and repression. //

The fact is that when given the opportunity to break with al-Qaeda, he did. And he fought ISIS even when it got him nothing of value. //