Dear President Bashar al-Assad,

I know things are looking down, but chin up. There is quite a lot of hope on the horizon. You and your family may be international pariahs and bloodthirsty religious extremists may be gallivanting around beheading Christians and eating the hearts of your dead soldiers but don’t worry, in a few generations your family won’t have anything to worry about. That is, if you manage to crush those pesky rebels.

Fortunately for you and your offspring, it seems that you have just managed to avoid any international action that would seriously sway the civil war against you. With that worry out of the way all you need to do is finish off the various rebel factions and start your family’s public relations recovery campaign.

Now I know what you are thinking. How in the world can you save your family’s reputation and get back into respectable international society so that your wife can shop in fancy Parisian boutiques after you gunned down protestors in the streets, presided over a civil war in which over a hundred thousand people have been killed and might have even used chemical weapons which is a really big no-no for people the U.S. doesn’t like? Well it’s not really that difficult. All you need to do is emulate another ruling family that is quite famous. It can be argued that the founder of this dynasty committed even more atrocities than you and yet his descendants still sit comfortably on the throne.

This man waged a campaign of genocide that killed over a hundred thousand people, invaded and enslaved an entire nation and claimed all of their property as his own. After that this man’s descendants spread out and waged campaigns of conquest and terror around the globe for hundreds of years (including against my own ancestors) killing millions.
That man was Duke William of Normandy also known as “the Conqueror,” whose 24th great granddaughter Elizabeth ll now sits on the throne of England. Whenever his 27th great-grandson George was born this past summer the world’s press was camped out around the hospital to cover his birth and vast numbers of Brits and Americans eagerly followed every development. This adulation is, despite the long and sordid history of violence, theft, oppression, and death that is the only reason the House of Windsor sits upon the Throne of England and is paid any attention to today.

While you, Mr. President, certainly have got a lot of blood on your hands that has allowed you to remain the President of Syria even when you add the blood your father spilled, it pales in comparison to the oceans of blood that has been spilt by William the Conqueror and his descendants that allows them to enjoy the fame and popularity they have today.
So in closing Mr. President, I once again urge you to buck up. Things aren’t really that bad. If there is one thing true about humans, it is their inconsistency and hypocrisy. If you manage to crush the rebels and hire a decent PR firm and do away with the pretense of democracy and declare yourself King maybe within 50 years ignorant Americans will be just as excited by the birth of your great-grandchild as they were about the birth of William the Murder’s 27th great-grandchild.

Wishing you ill health,
Zachary Yost