The Pentagon has labored mightily to train Syrians to fight Assad. The result is a bizarre little 50 person contingent, which just had its leader kidnapped by al-Nusra. Rather than admit the obvious, which is the U.S. hasn’t a clue what is happening in Syria and attempts to intervene invariably backfire, Obama is now huffing and puffing, saying any Syria attempts to threaten this wee little ragtag army will be met by airstrikes.
This would be comical except Pentagon attempts to intervene make things worse for the U.S. because, wait for it, the locals don’t like being bombed. The “plan” here, if it can even be called a plan, is clearly to oust Assad. Then U.S. conquerors will be greeted with sprinkled rose petals in their paths when they enter Damascus to liberate it. Oh wait, isn’t that exactly what the neocons said would happen in Baghdad too? It didn’t turn out quite that way, did it?
We as a country are Addicted To War. That’s why we have so many of them. And why they generally don’t turn out well. Addicts have terrible judgement. They do it because they must. Our war machine profits mightily from this, the rest of the country and the world, not so much.
It goes without saying that covert US efforts to aid the multifarious groups vying for control of the country have met with disastrous consequences so far, but if there’s anything Washington is particularly adept at, it’s making bad foreign policy outcomes worse, which is why we weren’t at all surprised to learn that the commander of the Pentagon’s new Syrian “force” was captured, along with his deputy, by al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra last week near the border with Turkey.
This makes the Keystone Cops look like grizzled professionals.