U.S. Throws in Towel On Its 5-Man Syrian "Army"

The U.S. just announced that it's giving up on creating a Mighty Army of "moderate" Syrian mercenaries to fight ISIS and ONLY ISIS and leave Assad alone. Now the half billion dollar program will be "repurposed" in U.S.-government-speak to "support" "moderate" Syrians, who will be tasked with spying on ISIS for the U.S. and to spot targets for U.S. aerial attack. [1]

This comes in the wake of aggressive Russian military intervention in Syria on behalf of the awful Assad dictatorship. The dictatorship still holds 25% of Syrian territory, but has 60% of the populace under its malign sway, some of whom were driven into those areas by Assad's bombardments of civilians.

Russia recently moved strike aircraft into Syria, and is conducting bombing raids on rebel-held areas. They claim to be targeting ISIS, but the U.S. asserts that over 90% of Russian airstrikes are hitting what the U.S. calls moderate Syrians. (Let us take that to mean non-Jihadist.) The U.S. is also claiming that four Russian cruise missiles, fired from the Caspian Sea 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from Syria and presumably aimed at rebel areas, landed instead in Iran. Whoops!

Iran is another Assad ally that has sent fighting forces into Syria to prop up the sagging Assad regime, as well as having its Lebanese Hezbollah clients sent in fighters. (An Iranian general was also just killed in Syria. Good riddance.)

Turkey has complained that Russia aircraft locked on Turkish planes with their radar, which is potentially a step before shooting down an airplane. (When Assad actually shot down two Turkish military jets a few years ago, there was no apparent retaliation.)

It's a shame that the U.S. didn't aid the rebellion in the first year, as I called for, when it could have made a difference. After that, it was basically too late, plus Jihadists like al-Nusra front and later ISIS got ever stronger. For the past four and more years the U.S. has been half-assed and feckless. Its now officially defunct scheme to train up 5,400 Syrians to be a client U.S. force fighting ONLY ISIS, the wheels having fallen off that wagon, is the latest faux policy to be exposed as mostly just going through the motions (while wasting untold hundreds of  millions of dollars).

If morality guided U.S. foreign policy, a vigorous intervention at the start of the uprising might have been successful. The false "pragmatism" of amorality once again proves that it is unrealistic, and moral behavior represents genuine realism. Because morality is embedded in the fabric of existence. The irony is that the U.S. could have gotten what it claims to want (Assad's removal) by behaving morally and supporting people rising up against a brutal tyrant. (Oh, and it would also have been backing what it claims to "stand for," freedom and democracy.)

The struggles of empire to gain more power and wealth have always benefitted the few, while retarding the development of better lives for the bulk of humanity. Maybe some day enough people will realize that to finally put an end to the Age of Imperialism, which has lasted thousands of years and is overdue for burial in the graveyard of history.

1] See U.S. Deploys Mighty Army of “4 or 5” Soldiers to “Degrade” Islamic State aka ISIS; also Obama's “ISIS Czar” Bails Out; and U.S. Funnels More Weapons To Its Enemies.