Syrian Hitler!? (or not)

How did president of Syria Bashar Al-Assad go from villain that the US must destroy (Fall 2013) to ally against the Islamic State (Today)? By presenting himself as a reasonable leader in the Western mold, Bashar Al-Assad avoided analogies tying him to Hitler and Islamic Extremism. Avoiding these analogies prevented them from being used in the case against him, weakening the argument for air strikes or an invasion of Syria by US Forces.

Faced with time constraints, instead of computing all the variables to make the most logical decisions, decision makers often use analogies to determine the best course to take. Historical analogies define the nature of the current situation (Khong pp.19-29) through their perceived similarity (Gentner). They allow for schematic thinking, in which a hypothesised cognitive structure becomes a situational blueprint made up of character types, like “another hitler” and scripts like “balkanisation” or “a trojan horse”. Analogies circumscribe the role of the actor and define the actor’s appropriate status in the international system (Vertzberger pp.225-321).

Assad successfully avoided one of the most dangerous analogies: the Hitler Analogy. When any leader of the free world is faced with a “Hitler”, the only rational choice is to depose the “Hitler” before he destabilises his region of commits a genocide. Dictators who are successfully put into this Hitler mould do not last very long: Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi.

• In 2013, when a strike seemed imminent, President Assad rarely presented himself in a military context and when he did, he did so in a non-hostile way, as a president visiting his country’s troops, not as one of the troops.
• Rather than being shown fighting, he is seen encouraging the soldiers, adopting a civilian role and providing them with peaceful material support. Even in pictures posted of his days in the Syrian Army, he is never shown with a gun- he is shown with a shovel and blanket, helping set up camp. He supports the troops, he shakes their hands, but he is not a fighter.
• By taking up the suit and tie, Assad takes up the uniform of the western civilian leader.

How could a respectable-looking man with a suit and tie be a despicable dictator!?