And Putin is trolling him with a coalition of his own … to do the same.
American-trained Syrian fighters gave at least a quarter of their U.S.-provided equipment to al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria early this week, the U.S. Central Command said late Friday.
In a statement correcting earlier assertions that reports of the turnover were a “lie” and a militant propaganda ploy, the command said it was subsequently notified that the Syrian unit had “surrendered” some of its equipment — including six pickup trucks and a portion of its ammunition — to Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s arm in Syria.
The acknowledgment is the latest discouraging report regarding the $500 million train-and-equip program, which Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, head of Central Command, said last week had only ‘four or five’ trained Syrian fighters active in Syria.
(The Washington Post, September 25, 2015)
Humiliating? Farcical? Unbelievable? Absolutely!
Except that here, in part, is how I warned it would be thus:
If the Afghans and Iraqis Americans spent over a decade training to govern themselves, defend themselves, and sustain themselves can’t stand on their own against a rag-tag bunch of Taliban fighters and rampaging ISIS terrorists, respectively, then they deserve whatever fate befalls them. To say nothing of the dreadful spectacle of so many of those the U.S. trained either turning their guns directly on U.S. troops — in now notorious ‘green-on-blue’ killings, or using that training to professionalize the ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS.
Incidentally, Obama is making quite a show of seeking congressional authorization to train ‘moderate’ Syrian fighters as part of his war on terrorism strategy. But, consistent with the foregoing, nothing betrays the wishful thinking inherent in this quite like the shameful (and ultimately sacrificial) way thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops threw down their U.S.-made weapons, abandoned their U.S.-made military vehicles, and hightailed it from just a few hundred poorly equipped ISIS fighters.
(“Demystifying ISIS: Case against Obama’s Bush-lite War on Terrorism,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 10, 2014)
Meanwhile, in light of ‘Breaking News’ about the Taliban recapturing a major city in Afghanistan, I reprise this warning – from “Perhaps Only Authoritarian Regimes Can Govern Arab Countries,” June 11, 2014. It pertains to the abiding fecklessness and futility of Americans trying to manage internecine conflicts throughout the Muslim world that have variously simmered and erupted for over a thousand years.
__________________
The primary cause of this mess is the sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims that has been simmering in Arab countries since time immemorial, which only authoritarian regimes seem willing and/or able to keep a lid on.
Of course, most glaring in this context is the fact that, after almost 13 years of trying to build an Afghanistan that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself, security there today is no greater than it is in Iraq. Nothing demonstrates this quite like the Taliban – whose authoritarian regime U.S. forces ousted 13 years ago – being so insurgent that they seem destined to destabilize the democratically elected government of Afghanistan with even greater speed and ease (after the United States ends it mission in 2015) than Iraqi insurgents are destabilizing the democratically elected government of Iraq.
Not to mention how emboldened the Taliban had to have become after forcing the United States just 10 days ago to release five of its top leaders from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, the one American POW they held captive for the past five years.
_________________
In any event, here are just a few of the points I delineated in the above-quoted “Demystifying ISIS” as the only sensible strategy for dealing with this jihadi menace.
- If your enemies are hell-bent on fighting among themselves – as Sunnis vs. Shiites, al-Qaeda vs. ISIS, Sunni moderates vs. Sunni extremists (aka ISIS) – are doing get out of the way! I have belabored this point in such commentaries as “Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds Fighting for Control of Iraq. Stay Out, America!” June 19, 2014.
If Russia wants to ape your folly by wasting blood and treasure trying to settle/manage sectarian conflicts throughout the Muslim world, let it! Perhaps Russia can do for Syria (and to itself) over the next twelve years what the United States did for Iraq (and to itself) over the past twelve. It’s patently delusional, for example, for Putin to think that Russian airstrikes will be able to shape developments on the ground any more than American airstrikes have … despite a whole year of sorties. Alas, just as the United States did not learn the lessons of its ill-fated war in Vietnam, it appears Russia did not learn the lessons of its equally ill-fated war in Afghanistan. Mind you, this is just the latest in what I have commented on in such commentaries as “Putin’s Military Maneuvers Just Mercenary Distractions,” June 18, 2015, and “Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Turns ‘Red,’” February 25, 2014. Specifically, here is an excerpt from the latter, which explains why his motivation in this case is more about saving Putin’s Russia than saving Assad’s Syria.
___________________
It would make a mockery of the Cold-War principles he governs by if Putin allows these Ukrainian revolutionaries to put his puppet Yanukovych on trial — the way Egyptian revolutionaries are doing with their former leaders Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi; or worse, if he allows them to execute Yanukovych in the streets like a bunch of hungry hyenas devouring a gazelle — the way Libyan revolutionaries did with Muammar Gaddafi.
After all, Putin has made no secret of his contempt for what he decried as Obama’s failure to protect America’s puppet leader, Mubarak, from avenging mobs.
Let me hasten to clarify, however, that Putin’s contempt was and remains entirely self-interested. He makes quite a show of standing in solidarity with despots like Ben Ali of Tunisia, Yanukovych of Ukraine, and Assad of Syria. But he does so only because he lives in mortal fear that the popular uprisings that toppled them might topple him too. Period.
This is why he must’ve been a little unnerved yesterday when even pro-Russian Ukrainians began calling for Yanukovych’s head after they got a glimpse of the obscenely opulent, Louis-XVI lifestyle he was living at their expense. So just imagine what Putin’s peasant supporters in Russia would want to do to him if they were suddenly presented with clear and convincing evidence that he lives a lifestyle that’s a thousand times more extravagant than Yanukovych’s, having amassed billions in ill-gotten gains over the years as a KGB officer turn politician.
After eight years in power, Putin has secretly accumulated a fortune of more than $40bn. The sum would make him Russia’s (and Europe’s) richest man.
(“Putin, the Kremlin Power Struggle and the $40bn Fortune”, The London Guardian, December 21, 2007)
Trust me, Putin lords over a kleptocracy that has fleeced public funds on such an unprecedented scale, it makes the kleptocracies African despots lord over seem petty. Which of course is why he is so anxious to stoke the combustible geopolitical crisis in Ukraine to deflect the international media from drawing unavoidable parallels between Yanukovych’s dubious accumulation of wealth and his. Far better, for example, to get Russians drunk with pan-Russian pride than to have them pose sober questions about the billions he and his cronies embezzled from the $50-billion price tag for the Sochi Olympics.
__________________
- If radicalized Americans want to go to Syria to fight and die in those conflicts, let them!
- If any American sets foot in Syria or Iraq, and there’s probable cause to believe he might have been fighting with Islamic terrorists, make a public show of arresting him and letting him rot in prison. This prospect is so terrorizing I suspect most terrorists would rather die over there than be imprisoned over here – as Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Richard Reid would readily attest.
Incidentally, I appreciate how disqualifying my strategy might be given that Donald Trump, of all people, is now parroting it.
But bear in mind that no less a person than Obama used to champion the wisdom of withdrawing from such foreign entanglements to focus on building up the United States. Only God knows why he started aping Bush by bombing up Arab states … to no avail. I have lamented his political morphing (in this respect) in such commentaries as “Obama Aping Bush on Mideast Peace Too,” September 7, 2010.
Enough said?
Related commentaries:
Demystifying ISIS…
Authoritarian regimes…
Sunnis, Shias, Kurds…
Putin’s military maneuvers…
Obama Aping Bush…