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It was a pathetic display from the United Nations stage: David Petraeus, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, giddily calls himself a “fan” of Ahmed Al-Sharaa, worries about his sleep habits, and essentially salivates all over him:

For context, this is a man who had a $10 million bounty on his head less than a year ago—in December 2024, Joe Biden’s State Department dropped the bounty on Al-Sharaa (formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani) when his group of Islamic militants deposed Basher al-Assad and took control of the Syrian government. Ironically, Al-Sharaa’s role in leading terrorist groups that were killing civilians across the Levant earned him sanctions just a few years earlier…by the very same United Nations that is now hosting him as a legitimate dignitary. In May of 2013, when the U.S. government designated Al-Sharaa a terrorist, it provided this reasoning:

Under al-Jawlani’s [Al-Sharaa’s] leadership, al-Nusrah Front has carried out multiple suicide attacks throughout Syria. … Many of these attacks have killed innocent Syrian civilians. Al-Nusrah’s claimed operations since the group’s December 2012 designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization have included a January 26, 2013 suicide attack on a military base in Syria’s Quneitra Province, near the Golan Heights; a February 15, 2013 statement claiming responsibility for early February suicide attacks on regime targets in Damascus and the nearby town of al-Shadadi; and a March 20, 2013 statement claiming responsibility for two separate suicide attacks that targeted a bridge and bunker near the city of Homs on March 6, 2013.

Although al-Nusrah Front was formed by AQI in late 2011 as a front for AQI’s [al-Qa’ida in Iraq] activities in Syria, recently al-Jawlani publicly pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa’ida’s leader. [snip]

The violent, sectarian vision of al-Jawlani’s al-Nusrah is at odds with the aspirations of the Syrian people, including the overwhelming majority of the Syrian opposition, who seek a free, democratic, and inclusive Syria and have made clear their desire for a government that respects and advances national unity, dignity, human rights, and equal protection under the law – regardless of faith, ethnicity, or gender.

Extremism and terrorist ideology have no place in a post-Assad Syria, and all responsible Syrians should speak out against al-Qa’ida and other extremist elements. By opting for the use of force against its own people, the Assad regime has created the circumstances that attract the violent extremists, who seek to exploit civil strife for their own purposes. The sooner the political transition to a post-Assad Syria begins, the better it will be for the Syrian people and the region.

Again, the irony abounds: How ironic that the “post-Assad” political transition ended up being the very same “violent extremist” the U.S. State Department warned against.

So David Petraeus is a pathetic, pandering piece of work, but is Marco Rubio any better?

No, he’s not. Or, perhaps just barely since I don’t see Rubio with the same starry-eyed look that Petraeus had. Maybe it’s just me, but “propriety” and “diplomacy” aren’t necessary when dealing with a “leader” who has been on a maiming and murdering spree for, oh, I don’t know, decades.

Here’s what Al-Sharaa’s government has been doing since controlling Syria:

And here:

Here, we see a “demand for international protection” from governments like the U.S. and the European Union:

By shaking hands and posing for pictures with Al-Sharaa, Rubio just spit in Father Tony Boutros’s face. Is it possible to grow a spine, flout “convention,” and reject “go-along to get-along” statecraft? Why is it so hard to stand up for what’s right, tell Al-Sharaa he’s a murderer, and take an official position against his despotic, Islamist regime?

I’ve always sincerely appreciated the spirit of the Irish patriots who put their hands in their pockets when English “royalty” is around, a subtle but symbolic gesture of defiance and resistance against a monarchy that slaughtered their Irish countrymen just one hundred years before. (Shout out to Cillian Murphy.)

That’s what I would have expected from Rubio. An unequivocal “I don’t respect or recognize you Al-Sharaa” with a civil refusal to shake hands as gentlemen do—because Islamic terrorists who chop off the heads of innocents for social media videos are not gentleman, and it’s a disgrace to act the coward and brush Al-Sharaa’s crimes under the rug for the sake of “diplomacy.”

Image: Public domain.