The Theatre of Redemption
On Syria’s return to the world — and the fragile art of forgetting
By Michael Lamonaca 11 November 2025
There are moments in politics when a handshake says more than any treaty. This week, the world watched one of those moments unfold in the White House, where President Donald Trump welcomed Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa — a man once hunted as a terrorist — to announce that his country would join the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State.
The images were immaculate. Flags aligned, cameras steady, smiles rehearsed. Syria, after thirteen years of ruin and isolation, would re-enter the circle of legitimacy. Sanctions suspended. Embassies reopened. A new beginning, at least in the language of diplomacy.
Yet in the polished calm of that room, the air was heavy with history. Only months ago, al-Sharaa led an armed faction that the United States itself labelled a terrorist organisation. There was a bounty on his head and blood on his hands. Now, the same government that once condemned him calls him a “partner in peace.”
The transformation is convenient — for Washington, a strategic re-alignment; for Damascus, a resurrection. It is also profoundly unsettling. When power decides that yesterday’s villain is today’s ally, morality becomes negotiable.
Trump, true to form, praised al-Sharaa’s toughness and charisma. “He’s a fighter,” he said, “a young, attractive guy.” The language was telling. Character, in this theatre, is performance — not the slow work of conscience but the swift rebranding of image. The past was brushed aside in favour of opportunity. “We talked about the present and the future,” al-Sharaa told reporters. In politics, the past is always an inconvenience.
But the ghosts of Syria’s war do not fade on command. Entire communities — Alawite, Druze, Bedouin — remain scarred by the violence that his factions helped unleash. Tens of thousands of lives were traded for power, influence, or faith in false ideologies. No coalition, however large, can erase that ledger.
And yet, the spectacle of rehabilitation carries its own seduction. The idea that a nation, or a man, might cleanse himself through alliance rather than accountability appeals to the pragmatist in us all. It is the world’s oldest bargain: reputation in exchange for memory. But history is a poor accomplice to convenience.
Diplomacy often argues that such deals are necessary — that progress demands compromise. There is truth in that. But compromise without acknowledgment is not diplomacy; it is denial wrapped in ceremony. When power trades morality for strategy, it teaches the world that principle is optional, that redemption can be purchased at the price of collective amnesia.
What makes this moment more fragile is that it doesn’t occur in isolation. Across continents, we see the same pattern: leaders recast, regimes rehabilitated, public memory trimmed to fit the needs of the present. It is not confined to Syria, or to the United States. It is the wider human habit of preferring reinvention over reflection, convenience over conscience.
Perhaps this is what makes the scene in the Oval Office so familiar. Two men smiling, each claiming renewal — one seeking legitimacy, the other legacy. Both confident that history can be edited with the right photograph. And yet the photograph cannot conceal what the eyes have seen.
There is, of course, a human yearning behind all this. Every nation, like every person, wants to be seen differently, to begin again, to outgrow its errors. But genuine transformation begins where spectacle ends. It demands truth spoken aloud, not quietly buried under new alliances and economic deals. Without that honesty, the future merely inherits the old deceit — polished, not erased.
When Syria re-enters the coalition, it does so carrying the weight of unacknowledged loss. Its cities stand half-rebuilt; its people half-heard. Partnerships may heal economies, but only truth can heal a soul — or a nation.
The White House meeting may well reshape the geopolitics of the Middle East, but it will not restore credibility by itself. That requires something rarer than strategy: humility. And humility is the one quality that cannot be staged.
History will watch what follows — not the speeches, but the silences; not the handshakes, but the hands that rebuild or oppress. Because redemption is not a headline, and forgiveness is not a policy.
Power can rebrand a man, but only truth can redeem him.
— The Virtue Lens
Reading the world through the measure of character.