The fall of Bashar Al Assad’s brutal regime is a moment for celebration. He is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the immiseration of millions more. Like his late Baathist co-partisan, Sadaam Hussein, Assad used the state to torture, kill, and maim innocent civilians for decades. He will now join Edward Snowden in exile in Russia, where he will almost certainly try to be a player in Syria’s future.

American government officials should be eager to seize this opportunity, but wary about rehabilitating enemies for the sake of creating false allies. Over the last twenty years, American officials have fooled themselves that some terrorists could be made statesmen, only to watch them slaughter more innocents. We’ve emboldened the Taliban and al Qaeda by treating Sirajuddin Haqqani as a statesman. We’ve repeatedly released terrorists in custody, only to see them return to the battlefield stronger and deadlier.

As President Biden and President-elect Trump look at the battlefield, it will be tempting to tip the scales for one group. Some of that instinct may be borne of a desire to undo the mistakes of the early years of the Syrian Civil War, in which the United States did too little to empower the democratic forces that may have been aligned with American values and interests. However, it’s important to remember that all the players in this sordid drama are drenched in blood; and some of that blood is American. After thirteen years of war, everyone’s hands are stained. Both Biden and Trump should be steely-eyed about the Syrian battlefield. Supporting any government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) or the Syrian National Army would be a catastrophic mistake that would encourage similar groups across the globe.

Currently, the Biden administration is considering removing HTS from the list of foreign terrorist organizations to ease the way to engaging with the terror group. That would be a mistake.

HTS led the fight that brought down Assad and is forming a government.