The United States said on Tuesday it had indications that Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military were captured by fighters from al Qaeda’s Syria wing, Nusra Front, in the latest blow to a fledgling program at the center of America’s war strategy.
The incidents underscore the extreme vulnerability of the New Syrian Forces, a still tiny group thought to number less than 60 who only deployed to the battlefield in recent weeks
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The New Syrian Forces are at the core of U.S. President Barack Obama’s strategy to build them into a force large enough to wrest territory from Islamic State, instead of injecting American combat troops into Syria’s messy civil war.
This is just sad. 60 people (instead of thousands promised to be trained). Sad both because people died/were captured, but also as an illustration to how pathetic and bizarre US military/foreign policy has gotten, it’s just sad.
Reminds one of that comedic meme when someone carefully nurtures to health a poor birdie with a broken wing for weeks, then finally releases the newly healthy bird into the wild, fly birdie fly!, and it’s immediately snatched and eaten by a falcon.
Kirk Sowell, principal of Uticensis Risk Services, a Middle East-focused political risk firm, who closely follows Arab media summed it up this way on Twitter: “Pentagon: Arab media are laughing at you.”
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Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum who closely follows Islamist opposition groups in Syria and Iraq, told The Jerusalem Post that “for many Sunni Arabs and Syrian Sunni Arab rebels in particular, this train-and-equip program has had no credibility from the outset.”
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Middle East researcher Ali Bakir, who also writes for Arab publications, told the Post on Wednesday that “no one in the Arab world takes this program seriously; I mean you would need around 50 to 60 people to play paintball but definitely not to fight Islamic State.”
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This situation is increasingly seen in the Arab world as siding with the Shi’ites at the expense of the vast majority of Muslims, he asserted.
The US administration is more concerned about not jeopardizing the Iran deal than helping the Syrian people, Bakir added.
Again, if you’re going to get into a fight, you need to get in to win. War isn’t something you just give the old college try on and if you fail, oh well.
I just don’t get the impression that the President cares whether we succeed or not. This is war for politics’ sake.
It would not surprise me to see CIA involvement here-just the ticket-“training” people who may well be working for the enemy, then getting “captured”-probably millions of $$ spent on this, a typical CIA screwup.
There is no “success”. The more we get involved, the more incidents like this we’ll have. The more we “try to win” (in any traditional military sense) the more we’ll be doomed to fail, and the costlier the failure will be.
So, exactly WHAT is Obama trying to prove here, anyway? Syria is a mess-injecting more weapons into it will only increase the slaughter. We do not learn from history-remember when we armed a group in Afghanistan (to fight the Russians)? That worked great!
I think we’ve been quite consistently critical, while acknowledging that this strategy is much, much better than getting further involved (mired) in the region.
Obama’s anti-ISIS strategy sucks, but it’s far better than what any of his opponents would do.
We have a pathological inability to learn from past mistakes. Too many Americans still think that because we won World War II, we can win any war if we send in enough troops and drop enough bombs. Liberating democratic countries by defeating totalitarian governments is possible. Installing friendly democratic governments in Middle Eastern nations that have never had democracy before, and where the population has no desire to be governed by a secular, friendly-to-the-west government, is not possible.
The US has never been able to do anything in the Middle East that did not offend some major group of people. Attempting to intervene leaves us eligible for being blamed when things go sour. The best option would be to leave them to their own fates.
IIRC the Turks ruled the region on and off for 400 years, sometimes leaving until fighting amongst the locals made them weak enough to be dominated again.
ETA: If Europe feels threatened let them be responsible for their own defense.
Bullshit. “In” is not a viable strategy. Halfway in (and right now I’d say we’re more like a quarter in) is much, much better than all-the-way-in (if not nearly as good as completely out). Right now we don’t have American soldiers dying by the score, and we’re not wasting hundreds of billions per year in the region. We’d have those things, plus more turmoil, more civilian deaths, and more enemies were we in all the way.
It boggles my mind how anyone could manage to miss these lessons of the Iraq war. The more we are involved, up to and including all the way “in”, the worse it will be for the region and the weaker America will be.
I don’t think you particularly understand the Powell doctrine, which requires the following:
1.Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2.Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3.Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4.Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5.Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6.Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7.Is the action supported by the American people?
8.Do we have genuine broad international support?
And when have I endorsed going in half-way? It’s a terrible idea, only looking like a good one when compared to going all the way in.
You forgot the decisive force part. But you’re right, according to the Powell Doctrine, we shouldn’t be involved. But once the President made that decision, he should have deployed the force necessary to achieve the objective that he doesn’t have.