Why Are U.S. Troops In Syria?
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han and Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming, whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at NPR Wine Club.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. |
| 0:18.8 | Hi, this is Hannah. And Armand. |
| 0:26.3 | We're on the fifth and final day of our road trip from Boston, Massachusetts to Phoenix, Arizona, |
| 0:28.2 | accompanied by my dog Finn. |
| 0:34.7 | This podcast was recorded at 108 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, December 10th, 2024. |
| 0:38.4 | Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully I'll be settling into my new home in Phoenix. Here's the show. |
| 0:45.8 | Oh, congratulations. That's a long trip, and a lot of weather and geography changes. Hey there, |
| 0:52.2 | it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover |
| 0:55.1 | politics. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political |
| 1:00.8 | correspondent. Today on the show, we're taking a look at the major changes in recent days in Syria. |
| 1:06.1 | And what those events mean for U.S. foreign policy as a new administration prepares to take office in |
| 1:12.0 | Washington. Greg, let's start with the big news of the weekend. Bashar al-Assad, the country's |
| 1:18.4 | longtime leader, has been deposed. What happened? And why did this happen now after so many years |
| 1:25.0 | of civil war? Yeah, it was quite shocking. And as somebody who's |
| 1:28.3 | followed Syria for a long time, I mean, we're talking about more than 50 years of rule by |
| 1:33.9 | Bashar Assad's father, Hafez Assad, and now by Bashar Assad. So between them, they date back to |
| 1:39.6 | the Nixon administration. Little aside, I saw a great picture posted. Just before Nixon resigned, |
| 1:45.7 | he went to Syria in 1974, posed with Hafez Assad, and there's little Bashar Assad, eight-year-old |
| 1:52.1 | in short pants standing with them in the photo. So quite a extraordinary image, if we think about |
| 1:57.3 | that time till today. Wow. And just reinforces how long this family has been ruling. |
| 2:02.5 | Absolutely. And the Assad rule has been under threat since the Civil War erupted back in 2011. |
| 2:09.7 | But it looked like Assad had survived that. He was getting a lot of help from Russia and Iran. |
... |
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