As horrible as the Assad regime was, there are still ways that things could get worse for Syrians.

A brief note tonight on the Corner, for I spent most of this incredibly newsy day translating the Carnival of Fools from my brain to the page like Al Swearingen passing a kidney stone on Deadwood. (I would provide a link to the scene, but you’re better off without one.)

After a half century of tyranny, the Assad regime in Syria has suddenly collapsed completely. Assad and his family have fled to Russia, the Baathist terror regime has fallen, and rebel militias led by the Turkish-backed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have seized control of the nation — always more of a geographical expression than a coherent set of boundary lines — and its major population centers in Aleppo, Homs, and the capital of Damascus.

The Assads can go to hell — Moscow will suffice for now — and may the weak-chinned dictator himself live long enough at least to see every ridiculous simpering official portrait of his ripped off every surface in the Middle East. But don’t expect anything much better. You’d be a fool to be an optimist.

HTS’s leader and primary spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Jolani has certainly managed the public-facing aspects of a violent military coup well enough to date, emphasizing religious pluralism and nonhostility toward Israel as he consolidates military control of a notoriously sectarian and divided country. (Israel has itself set up a forward defensive perimeter in Syria and Lebanon as a buffer zone against a potential stream of refugees and/or jihadis.) And perhaps everybody can change. But it usually doesn’t happen like the ending of Rocky IV, either.

I see the triumphalism of some online about the “liberation of Syria” and wonder if they know who Syria was just liberated by: Up until 2016 al-Jolani was also the leader of the Al-Nusra Front, a.k.a. al-Qaeda’s formal affiliate in Syria. He was specially designated as a “global terrorist” by the United States’ own State Department, complete with at $10 million bounty on his head.

One imagines the United States is no longer interested in collecting that bounty, now that they are dealing with — at least theoretically — the new ruler of Syria. (One in fact suspects they have not been interested in collecting it for quite awhile, a point with its own implications.)

The jury in this case is still out, and arguably beyond our ability to directly affect in any event. So while disaster in Syria is by no means foreordained — if positive strides are made, they will receive their due acknowledgment here — my advice is to set your expectations remarkably low, with understanding that as horrible as the Assad regime was, there are still ways that things could get worse for Syrians.