The Patriot Post® · Bad and Bizarre in Syria

The civil war in Syria took a strange turn this week as General Salim Idriss, leader of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), reportedly fled for Qatar. Or maybe it was Turkey. Or, actually, Idriss later claimed he didn’t flee at all but had left the country before the Islamic Front took over his headquarters. Only the Islamic Front was supposedly helping the general. The FSA is the focus of Western efforts to arm, train and support some semblance of moderate resistance to Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime. But as you can see from this bizarre telling of events, it’s difficult to distinguish between groups and to tell what’s actually happening in Syria.

Over the last year, so-called moderates have been losing ground to al-Qaida and its ilk, and anti-Assad forces have become ever-more dominated by radical Islamists. Those jihadis now hold most of the northern Syria territory under rebel control, and have seized numerous stores of weapons and supplies belonging to the moderates. In other words, the West has ended up supplying the Islamists because they’re inseparable from any “moderates.” The Obama administration still says it plans to attend the Geneva peace talks in January and may, in fact, decide to support Islamist groups – provided their not allied with al-Qaida. (No, we’re not kidding.)

Some may argue that the U.S. was too slow and insufficient in arming moderate rebels, and that this delay allowed jihadis to overrun the opposition. It’s more likely, however, that this was only a matter of time. The “Arab Spring” has turned out to be nothing but a Middle East-wide radical Islamist uprising, replacing lousy, murderous, secular leaders with fanatical Muslims. Pick your poison.