The Assad regime, father, and son, across 54 years, murdered, tortured, and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of their victims. And that was before the 2011 uprising and civil war, itself killing hundreds of thousands more. They governed under the Baathist ideology to which Saddam Hussein, whose victims exceeded the Assads, adhered.

Thousands of Assad’s prisoners are now emerging from dungeons, some not having seen daylight in years or decades.

Of course, the Assads, who besides tormenting their people, also massively stole from them, as longtime despots nearly always do. The just discovered presidential fleet of luxury vehicles was extensive, including a Cadillac Escalade. Perhaps the footage should appear in a Cadillac commercial:  Buy American! Apparently, the Assad family is now in the capital of their Russian patrons. Fortunately for Putin, Assad will be a cheap date. He has many bank accounts of looted funds that will sustain him indefinitely.

The Assads, who enjoyed some very brief friendly moments with America in the early and mid-1970s, have nearly always aligned with Russia and the Soviet Union. They also relied on Iran’s mullahs, especially with the 2011 revolution, after which Assad joined Hezbollah as Iran’s virtual proxy. Both Iran and Russia poured tens of billions into Assad’s crumbling regime, for which they now have nothing to show.

Under the Assads, Syria was an enemy to America, to Israel, and to the West. Syria was a prison, impoverished, fearful, and, for the last 13 years, racked by endless civil war leaving the country split into fiefdoms. There seems to be in Syria widespread relief over Assad’s overthrow and the end, mostly, to the worst of the civil war, though skirmishes among factions presumably will continue.

The main insurgency overthrowing Assad, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is Islamist but so far has mostly signaled it will not try to impose strict Islamist rule. They are smart to seek international legitimacy and support.