What do you call a $580 million program intended to train and equip 5,400 rebels but ends up yielding only “four or five” fighters at the cost of $41 million? Sen. Kelly Ayotte called it “a joke,” and Sen. Jeff Sessions called it “a total failure.” If that sounds too subjective, call it the United States’ latest strategy in Syria.
Last Friday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter formally announced that the U.S. will abandon the program of training and equipping “moderate” rebel groups in Syria to fight against extreme rebel groups like the Islamic State and against the government forces of President Bashar Assad.
“I wasn’t satisfied with the early efforts in that regard,” said Carter. Consequently, “we are looking at different ways to achieve basically the same kind of strategic objective.”
Virtually all of America’s earliest efforts in Syria were unsatisfactory to say the least.
March 15, 2011
The Syrian civil war officially began with the Syrian Arab Spring. However, by this point, Syria had already been part of the nations blacklisted by the Bush administration as the “axis of evil.” It already possessed an illegal arsenal of chemical weapons (which it later used). It was (and still is) a leading state sponsor of terrorism.
The Arab Spring only made the Syrian crisis worse. Demonstrators morphed into rifle-wielding rebels.
February 2012
The group Friends of Syria was formed in solidarity with the rebels.
November 2012
Britain, France and the six nations comprising the Gulf Cooperation Council formally recognized the Syrian rebels.
The United States refused to recognize the rebels. However, via the cia and other intermediaries, it provided $50 million worth of “non-lethal” aid to the Syrian opposition, such as satellite telephones and other communications equipment. The November 29-30 Internet blackout in Syria is believed to have been an act of sabotage against these rebels by a desperate Bashar Assad.
Dec. 11, 2012
In an abc News interview, U.S. President Barack Obama said that the Syrian Opposition Coalition “is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime.”
However, unlike like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. explicitly declared that it would not supply arms to the Syrian opposition.
Feb. 28, 2013
Incoming Secretary of State John Kerry pledged to directly provide $60 million in “non-lethal” aid to Syria’s main political opposition group, the Syrian Opposition Coalition. This was the first time the United States offered direct aid to Syrian rebels, instead of merely aiding them through intermediaries.
May 27, 2013
The European Union agreed to not renew an arms embargo that had been imposed on Syrian rebels battling Assad’s regime. This decision essentially permitted EU member states to unilaterally supply weapons to the often outgunned rebels in Syria.
Following the EU’s decision to lift the arms embargo on Syrian rebels, U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the decision was “helpful because it sends a message to the Assad regime that support for the opposition is only going to increase.”
Aug. 8, 2014
President Obama vehemently opposed arming any of Syria’s rebels.
In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Obama said, “With respect to Syria, it has always been a fantasy—this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.”
Sept. 17, 2014
The House of Representatives voted 273-to-156 in favor of legislation to authorize the Obama administration to arm and train “moderate” Syrian rebels against the Islamic State. The following day, the Senate voted 78-to-22 for the same authorization. The United States could now legally spend $580 million to arm and train about 5,400 “vetted” rebels in Syria.
There was the inherent danger that extremists would steal those American-supplied weapons and/or that Assad would intensify his fight against American-backed rebels (instead of the Islamic State), leaving him as the better of two evils. The Islamic State would also use similar rationale to intensify its fight against those groups supported by the U.S. (instead of those that the U.S. would oppose anyway).
Politicians like Marco Rubio and Jim Moran expressed their misgivings of the program, but they voted for it nonetheless. Rubio said, “What we are asked to do now is approve funding to arm moderate rebel elements in Syria. There is no guarantee of success. There is none. But there is a guarantee of failure if we do not even try.” Moran called the program “the best of a long list of bad options.”
Now we know what a bad option the strategy was.
How many more “bad options” can we expect with Syria? How will the Syrian crisis end? How much confidence can you place in the United States’ present solutions to the crises in the Middle East? How healthy is its track record when it comes to dealing with state sponsors of terrorism? Who will be the next Syria? Who will be the next United States—the superpower that will take a stab at solving our seemingly insolvable problems?
Our free literature can help you answer these questions.
