The Patriot Post® · Arming Syrian 'Moderates:' A Willful Suspension of Reality

On Wednesday, Americans got a rare bipartisan vote from the House of Representatives. Too bad it was one embracing monumental stupidity.

By a margin of 273-156, the House voted to authorize the Obama administration’s aim to arm and train “moderate” Syrian rebels. The authorization limits the number of trainees to 5,000 members of the so-called Syrian opposition, currently located in Saudi Arabia. No new funding is provided for the effort, but the Obama administration believes international contributions will help fund it. If not, the Pentagon is allowed to shift funds of up to $500 million from other accounts to pick up the slack. The administration must also provide status reports to Congress regarding the success or failure of building a viable opposition force.

Let me give you a little perspective in that regard. The United States was in Iraq for 8 years, and a good deal of the time we were there was spent training the Iraqi army. That would be the same Iraqi army that managed to cut and run when ISIS began its assault against their nation – when they weren’t outright deserting, or surrendering en masse.

But it gets “better.” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a former wartime commander of our military training programs in Iraq, conceded that half of the Iraqi army is incapable of partnering with the U.S. to roll back the gains made by ISIS in northern and western Iraq, while the other half needs partial rebuilding with additional training and equipment. Dempsey neglected to mention that one of the reasons they might need additional equipment is because much of the equipment previously supplied to them by the U.S. ended up in ISIS’s hands.

Need more evidence of what is likely to happen? Former Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee Pete Hoekstra provides it. He explains that when we decided to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, America, NATO and the 22-member Arab League provided a similar group of rebels with both funding and direct military assistance. “The short-term mission was accomplished,” Hoekstra explains. “The rebels overthrew Gaddafi and executed him.” That would be the same Muammar Gaddafi who had relinquished his nuclear weapons when it became clear he might share the same fate as that of Saddam Hussein.

After that? “The long-term results have been an unmitigated disaster,” Hoekstra writes. “Libya is now a chaotic failed state that exists in name only. Various Islamist radical jihadist groups have free rein. They brutally murdered four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. The soft underbelly of Europe is now exposed to the most radical elements from a terrorist playground.”

If that has a familiar ring, maybe it’s because the terrorist playground created by ISIS in Iraq and Syria was due in large part to the fecklessness of an Obama administration that decided we could “lead from behind” in Iraq, or more accurately, “lead from abroad.” In his effort to end the Iraq war – not win it–our Commander-in-Chief ignored the advice of his military commanders who had asked that 20,000 troops be left behind to carry out such missions as counterterrorist operations, diplomatic support, and continued the training and support for Iraqi security forces. Obama wanted to leave only 3000-5000 troops behind, even though he knew such a force would demonstrate a transparent unseriousness to an Iraqi government risking political backlash for keeping any Americans in country. As a result there was a failure to reach the necessary the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). A failure the president, the American left and their media allies like to blame on the Maliki government.

Really? “So when I am Commander-in-Chief, I will set a new goal on Day One: I will end this war," said Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. In 2011, it was no different. "So today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

Three years later, Iraq, exactly like Libya, is in complete chaos.

But not to worry, America. Despite Obama's assertion last June that “all options are on the table” for ways to help Iraq combat ISIS, there will be no American “boots on the ground.” Of course we’ve already got some boots on the ground in Iraq, but as Obama made perfectly clear, those forces “do not and will not have a combat mission.”

There was a bit of pushback, with Gen. Dempsey saying he might recommend ground forces in the future, and Gen. Lloyd Austin, the man in charge of the military command that includes Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, saying it might be a good idea to put special ops forces on the ground to fight with Iraqi and Kurdish security forces. But they don’t count either: the Pentagon issued a correction regarding Dempsey’s statement, and Obama rejected Austin’s strategy out of hand.

You almost have to wonder why Obama keeps any generals around at all, since he never seems to listen to any of their advice.

Yet unbelievable as it is, the House is on board with the so-called viable alternative of arming and training Syrian moderates. Moderates who despise Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is the same man ISIS despises for keeping their ever-expanding caliphate in check – meaning ISIS and the Syrian moderates share the same long-term objective.

And guess what? Many of the so-called moderates have allied themselves with ISIS, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Harakat al-Hazm.

But again, not to worry America. We’re going to once again “vet” the moderate Syrians to make sure they’re moderate. What do I mean once again? Many Americans might not know it, but arming Syrian rebels is not new news, it’s old news. As the Washington Post reported on September 11 – 2013 – the CIA had “begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria.” And they did so after Obama waived Section 40, and Section 40(a) of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) aimed at preventing the sale of weapons to terrorists, so that we could supply weapons to “vetted” Syrian opposition groups. While he was at it, Obama also “waived” the provision of the law that required him to notify Congress about the specifics of such transactions, 15 days before they occurred.

How did that work out? The U.S. and the UK were forced to suspend weapons shipments to the FSA in December, after the rebels’ weapons warehouses were overrun by terrorists. Yet in April, the Obama administration once again began supplying the FSA with weapons.

And once again in July, ISIS seized them.

So what will be different this time? Absolutely nothing, no many how many times clueless cheerleaders like Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), now joined by the likes of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) say it isn’t so. McKeon circulated a letter to his colleagues written by former ambassadors Ryan Crocker and Robert Ford, along with retired generals Jack Keane and David Petraeus. It offers the latest rationale behind the House’s decision. “Building up the moderate opposition in Syria will be a key element of any successful strategy against ISIS. To be sure, after three years of war, it will take a long time to build the moderate opposition. But there is no viable alternative. The United States must set to this task immediately,” the letter said.

Of course there’s a viable alternative, one that would undoubtedly take far less than a “long time” to achieve: a genuinely lethal campaign of bombing and a commitment of American troops that makes two things crystal clear: we will brook no threat whatsoever to our national security, and we will pound ISIS terrorists until their will is completely broken. So broken that the wannabes in Western nations see nothing but futility and death awaiting them, if they decide to embrace “Jihad Chic.”

And make no mistake: time is of the essence. On Thursday it was reported that Australian counterterrorism forces broke up a plot by ISIS to kidnap Australians in Sydney and Brisbane and conduct public beheadings on camera. The footage would then have been released worldwide by ISIS’s propaganda machine.

Does anyone seriously believe the same thing can’t happen here?

Unfortunately the House vote defines a willing suspension of reality with regard to both the war and the domestic threat. One I’m fearful only a rash of successful terrorist attacks in America will undermine. And even then, I would bet the stench of politically correct warfare, in all its surgical airstrikes and no boots on the ground bankruptcy, remains thick in the halls of Congress and the Oval Office. That is what happens when the Ruling Class has determined that war, when they deign to even use the word, can be managed – or is that outsourced – as opposed to won.

If you get nothing else from this piece, let me make it simple: we are fighting ISIS halfheartedly in Iraq, while the House just voted to arm them in Syria, all denials to the contrary notwithstanding. It doesn’t get much more political – or pathetically dangerous – than that.

UPDATE: Shortly after I submitted this piece to The Patriot Post, an equally clueless Senate also approved arming Syrian moderates by a 78-22 margin late Thursday. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is one of the few dissenters who understands what his colleagues have wrought. “We must now defend ourselves from these barbarous jihadists, but let’s not compound the problem by arming feckless rebels in Syria who seem to be merely a pit stop for weapons that are really on their way to ISIS,” he said. Sorry Senator, but a colossally feckless Congress did exactly that.

© 2014 The Patriot Post.