Who knew that beyond being a homicidal dictator – is there any other kind – Bashar al-Assad also happens to be a comedian.
The world’s most wanted, for the moment, fugitive briefly emerged from his safe house – somewhere in Russia near a store still selling luxury brands that his picky wife, Asma, covets – to clarify the circumstances which led to the sudden flight of Syria’s “first family”.
Al-Assad resurrected his Telegram account to claim that he had remained at the front – helmet on and ready to fight with, no doubt, a bayonet-tipped musket in hand – until that wrenching hour when all was lost.
“[My] departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles, as some have claimed,” al-Assad wrote. “On the contrary, I remained in Damascus, carrying out my duties until the early hours of Sunday, December 8, 2024.”
The nation’s brave, pencil-thin, commander-in-chief retreated to a Russian military base in the coastal city of Latakia only after “terrorist forces” had occupied the capital.
From there, a valiant al-Assad could “oversee combat operations” until, sadly, the base came under sustained drone attacks.
Alas, the phantom resistance proved futile. So, Bashar and Asma grudgingly heeded Moscow’s advice and promptly got out of Dodge before they joined the other, less well-known, martyrs who fought with – to borrow a phrase – the last full measure of devotion for a free Syria.
Comical stuff.
But equally farcical is the predictable construct among some Western media that al-Assad’s overthrow was a consequence, in large part, of his family’s longstanding and insatiable avarice at the expense of common Syrians – a signature trait of Middle East henchmen and not, of course, of enlightened leaders of “liberal democracies”.
In this stubborn calculus, the West is synonymous with uplifting egalitarianism, while the Middle East breeds, without exception, crushing despotism.
True to grating form, The Washington Post published the following headline, reflective to the syllable of this haughty attitude: “Assad lived in quiet luxury while Syrians went hungry.”
Now, you and I know that the Post will never pen a headline that reads: “King Charles lives in quiet luxury while Brits go hungry”.
It would be unbecoming.
This, despite the fact the shrinking Commonwealth’s new head – like all his gilded predecessors – calls the 775-room Buckingham Palace home and his every whim is catered to by more than 1,100 bowing staff.
The ailing British monarch’s private fortune – including hereditary estates, artwork, rare stamps, jewellery, cars, horses, investments, and other property – is estimated, conservatively, to amount to $2.3bn.
Meanwhile, a recent study found that one in three children and a quarter of adults live in poverty on the happy island that King Charles III reigns over with such a benevolent hand.
To add insult to the egalitarian fallacy, millions of his grateful subjects suffer from “food insecurity” – a palatable euphemism for “hunger” that reportedly a bureaucrat with the US Department of Agriculture coined in the late 1990s.
Unlike the plump Windsor clan, one in five British families routinely skips meals because they cannot afford to buy groceries. In 2023, more than 800,000 patients in England and Wales were hospitalised for malnutrition – yes, malnutrition – and other “nutritional deficiencies”, a threefold increase over the preceding 10 years.
King Charles III is not the only titular or true head of state in London or Washington, DC to forgo a vow of poverty in the “service” of commoners and the country.
Almost immediately after former Prime Minister Tony Blair left the modest comforts of 10 Downing Street, the saviour of the forgotten proletariat began behaving like a wanton capitalist making up for lost, lucrative time.
Blair leveraged his contacts and influence to become a lowly multimillionaire who insists that his personal kitty is nowhere close to the 45-million-pound figure often bandied publicly about.
“I haven’t actually changed, despite what people want to say,” Blair said, unconvincingly, in 2014. “The same thing that motivated me when I stood here … 20 years ago motivates me today. It’s not about making money, it’s about making a difference.”
You see, unlike the venal al-Assads, altruism, not greed, is what motivates former Western prime ministers and presidents to “give back” while, conveniently, amassing their cloaked-in-secrecy riches.
That humble Man from Hope, Bill Clinton, and his ever-faithful wife, Hillary, enjoy an estimated net worth of perhaps as high as $120m.
Remember, in 1996, President Clinton, working hand-in-white-glove with congressional Republicans passed draconian legislation that tied welfare benefits to work – proving that a Democrat could wage war on the poor for parochial political dividends.
Indeed, the number of Americans who were forced by Clinton’s tough-on-welfare edicts to endure “deep poverty” surged, prompting Senator Bernie Sanders to excoriate The Man From Hope for erasing hope among the impoverished.
“What welfare reform did, in my view, was go after some of the weakest and most vulnerable people in this country,” Sanders said in 2016.
Like the voracious Clintons, those shining avatars of fairness and equality – Barack and Michelle Obama – have been charging six-figure speaking fees, and signing $65m book advances to extol the virtues of fairness and equality to gullible audiences prepared to pay to listen to or read the ex-president and first lady weave myths about fairness and equality in flowery speeches and prose.
By way of instructive contrast, the median income of an African-American household is a paltry $56,490 and the Black unemployment rate remains twice that of white workers.
Before departing the Oval Office, Obama posted a message of solidarity on social media assuring his fellow Americans that he planned to return to his “citizen” Obama roots.
“It’s been the honor of my life to serve you,” he wrote. “I won’t stop; I’ll be right there with you as a citizen, inspired by your voices of truth and justice, good humor and love.”
Right.
Would “right there with you” be at the Obamas’ sprawling compound on the exclusive island of Martha’s Vineyard that the couple bought in 2019 or their 8,200-square-foot mansion which boasts eight bedrooms and nine-and-a-half baths as well as those simple folk – Jeff Bezos and Jared Kushner – as neighbours in a tony enclave of the US capital.
The American Express Gold Card-carrying members of the “global elite” – on the run or not – have a lot more in common than they or The Washington Post are prepared to admit.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
