Nothing to Show for the $500 Million Spent on Training Supposedly Moderate Syrian Anti-Assad Rebels — Yet This Profoundly Stupid Idea Apparently Continues on

© 2015 Peter Free

 

17 September 2015

 

 

If it is associated with the American Military Industrial Complex’s waging of perpetual war . . .

 

. . .  you just know that it will be both brainless and deadly.

 

By way of example — as I forecast a year ago — the idea of training supposedly moderate Syrian rebels came to 500 million dollars of naught:

 

 

Only four or five Syrian individuals trained by the United States military to confront the Islamic State remain in the fight, the head of the United States Central Command told a Senate panel on Wednesday, a bleak acknowledgment that the Defense Department’s $500 million program to raise an army of Syrian fighters has gone nowhere.

 

Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the top American commander in the Middle East, also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States would not reach its goal of training 5,000 Syrian fighters anytime soon.

 

He acknowledged that the program was behind schedule, and said that the military was reviewing it. Asked how many fighters were still in Syria, General Austin said that “it’s a small number.” He added, “We’re talking four or five.”

 

Defense officials said that only 100 to 120 Syrian fighters were in training right now.

 

The White House acknowledged that the program had not succeeded. “The administration knew on the front end that this would be a quite difficult task, and it’s proved to be even more difficult than we thought,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday.

 

© 2015 Helene Cooper, Few U.S.-Trained Syrians Still Fight ISIS, Senators Are Told, New York Times (16 November 2015) (extracts)

 

 

“Even more difficult than we thought”

 

That’s a near imbecilic observation.

 

The plan had no hope of success, and anyone the least bit familiar with the Middle East situation should have known it.

 

My suspicion is that:

 

 

(a) plenty of people profited from the idea of training and arming a small band of Syrian pawns

 

and

 

(b) the Administration was happy to keep the profit-seekers in its corner,

 

(c) while simultaneously offering the American people the baseless hope that the Syrian situation could be controlled at minimal cost.

 

 

The only losers?

 

These:

 

(i) The Syrians who were trained and died

 

(ii) the people whom they killed or will kill, maim, or make homeless — probably for no substantially effective reason

 

and

 

(iii) the United States’ perpetual patsies, its taxpayers.

 

 

The moral? — Just another example of the expensively deadly torrent of foolishness that is our Military Industrial Complex

 

In fairness, we can probably ultimately blame the President’s idea of successful politics for this one.

 

But I am pretty darn sure that bunches of uniforms and corporatists told him that this particular form of surreptitiously camouflaged 500 million dollar waste would be a great idea. And, thus, “the great idea” continues on with more purposelessly expended cannon fodder oozing bloodily through the billion dollar pipeline.