Back in 2007, when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were both running hot, the American Friends Service Committee issued a report that claimed we were spending $720 million a day and $500,000 a minute on those two conflicts. I was reminded of those numbers, which I assume were at least in the ballpark for accuracy, when I saw that the Obama administration had asked Congress for $500 million for direct military spending in Syria.
I’m not saying that $500 million isn’t a lot of money, but it doesn’t really amount to much when you’re talking about an ongoing civil, sectarian, and ethnic war that has engulfed a whole region. Obviously, back in 2007, $500 million wouldn’t have even gotten us through one day of fighting.
So, I have two reactions to this request. The first is that it is so insubstantial that it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. The second is that, precisely because this small sum is unlikely to be sufficient to make any material change in the conflict, this is just the first of many payments to come. In other words, it’s the first step on the slippery slope.
The administration has said repeatedly in recent weeks that it was preparing additional assistance to vetted “moderate” opposition forces fighting both the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and extremists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who have now spread their area of control across the Syrian border into Iraq.
If Congress approves the funding, it would mark the first direct U.S. military participation in the Syrian conflict. The training would probably take place in neighboring Jordan, where the CIA is currently training Syrian opposition forces, and possibly in Turkey.
I have zero faith in “moderate” forces in Syria right now. Moderate forces sound like forces who run away when confronted by committed fighters.
If it were up to me, I’d spend the money training people in Jordan to protect Jordan.
Iraqi military officials said Sunday that two border crossings — one with Syria and one with Jordan — had been seized by Sunni militants, in addition to the four nearby towns captured by insurgent forces since Friday.
The officials said “Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) captured the Turaibil crossing with Jordan and the al-Walid crossing with Syria after government forces pulled out.
Keeping the conflict from spreading within Jordan’s border seem like an effort worth investing in which has some prospect for success. But $500 million for Syria? We might as well just set our money on fire.
Agree totally.
By this time next year I won’t be surprised if we’ll be allied to Iran and Al Qaeda against Isis and the Saudis.
Iran, Cuba, and Russia seem to be on our permanent enemies list. And Iran has no more use for al Qaeda than we do — but the US aligning with Iran and al Qaeda would be no less comprehensible than where we are now which was probably your point.
Wherever did we get the idea that other countries are incapable of training their own police/military forces? Saddam did just fine. Am sure King Abdulla II can do just fine as well. It the equipment, weapons, and ordinance that they want from us. Tell them either to ask KSA for it or they can go pound sand.
That is an excellent question.
I think the correct action is to continue doing little to nothing and keeping an eye on it.
If our CIA were actually an intelligence-gathering outfit and not just a paramilitary loaned out to corporations, perhaps they could report back what is going on rather than selling weapons to all who will have them.
The BBC reported today that Iraq is turning to Russia for military aid. The article sounded like they were going to buy jets from Russia and Belarus, but considering the learning curve, I suspect that they’ll need Russian pilots too, at least for the short term. So we have the possibility of the US training and feeding “anti-Assad” guys who’ll end up in the meat grinder at the other side of Syria. Great.
By the way, who are the moderate anti-Assad people, the al-Nusri? The guys suspected of using poison gas brought in from Turkey, and who were slaughtering Christians and Alawites a little while back?
The bigger question is who the hell’s idea is this? Obviously, Obama will go along, but I can’t imagine him scratching his chin and thinking, “Hmm, nothing like throwing a half-billion into that sinkhole to bring democracy to the Middle East.”
Either Obama lost an internal struggle to that part of the permanent government that includes Kagan and the oil companies, or he never ever had a say in the matter.
Obama shouldn’t have hired the incompetent neocon advisers in his White House, the buck stops at his desk.
○ Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki: Russian jets will turn tide
○ Report: Russia to supply Syria with powerful MiG fighter jets (2007)
So, PM Maliki trusted the U.S. and ‘bought’ F-16’s instead, not to annoy neighbor Israel. He was always on the side of President Assad in Syria …
The buck doesn’t stop on Obama’s desk. He didn’t simply hire incompetent neocon advisers. Who was there to impose neocons (like his wife, the Goldwater Girl) on Clinton? Who imposed Zbigniew on Carter? The buck stopping on Obama’s desk? He’s lucky they gave him a desk.
The President doesn’t have the authority to run our foreign policy and hasn’t since JFK was gunned down like a pimp in broad daylight in the capital of oil, Dallas.
I’d think twice if I was one of those Syrians being offered training and equipment by the US; the people whom we’ve trained and equipped in Iraq and Afghanistan haven’t been doing so well. Maybe we should outsource the work to whomever is training and equipping the other side.
Or we could just keep our hands the hell off of Syria.
From my diary of December 2012 – US Foreign Policy, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood Ploy.
○ Obama administration declares Al Nusra Front a terror organisation
○ Syria Drama In the Making – the Bush and Obama Years 2005-2013
○ How ‘Shock and Awe’ Ended – Dec. 2011
See my extended diary posted today – US With Both Feet in Syrian Quagmire.
In addition, a follow-up diary about Obama’s covert intelligence ‘finding’ for military assistance to the Free Syrian Army in 2012.
○ Obama’s Secret Intelligence ‘Finding’ to Arm Syrian Rebels
○ Israeli jets bomb targets in Assad’s Syria in 2013
○ Syria launches airstrikes on border towns captured by ISIL forces in Iraq
○ Officials: 57 dead, 120 others hurt as Syrian warplanes strike Iraq’s Anbar province
○ Kerry warns Mideast nations after Syria bombs Iraq
Cross-posted from my diary – Sweeping ‘Patriot’ Laws Passed As Jordan Fears Uprising and ISIS.
Still kinda feels like we are getting ready to fight another war because Israel does not feel secure behind the walls they have built.
Our US government already facilitated the arming of the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria through our regional allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the UAE. The result of course was that as soon as those arms and materiel were delivered into the hands of those ‘moderate rebels’ they were ripped out of their hands by the far more aggressively violent Al Nusra and/or ISIS zealots, (or pre-emptively sold by the ‘moderates’ to them so as to avoid being killed on the spot).
Either way, this was the initial springboard that enabled ISIS to parlay their vicious takfiri insanity into the far-reaching phenomenon that it is right now. Those initial weapons ensabled them to achieve sufficient effectiveness in Syria to encourage wealthy private extremist Sunni investors to pump more money and arms into their cause.
Thanks to the irresponsible and deliberately provocative rhetoric from the US, combined with the aggressively feckless regime-change policy masquerading as humanitarian intervention which hijacked an otherwise legitimate internal protest by Syrian fartmers and exploited it for geopolitical aims against Iran and Russia, many thousands more Syrian citizens have been slaughtered than would have been otherwise, and literally millions more Syrians have been utterly dispossessed as a direct result of our US [fake] ‘humanitarian interventionist’ scheme.
Actually, it would be much safer to set $500 million on fire, because at least that way there wouldn’t be (inevitable) blow back.
Except of course that the pumping in of more money and materiel in this way is specifically designed to create more blowback, more chaos, more bloodshed, both in order to weaken, destabilize and/or outright destroy the countries involved and, in many cases, to provide the pretext for direct US or NATO military intrusion.
This has been a central tenet of Neoconservative wargasm dogma going all the way back to the Reagan regime, before the Neocons even acquired the `Neocon’ label. It is the primary tactic around which their pursuit of global monopolar hegemony is organized, and it is often represented, (by both the true believers and the clueless dupes fooled by the rhetoric), as `promoting democracy’, or `exercising America’s leadership role’, or `defending the international order’, or `humanitarian intervention’, or `American exceptionalism at work’.
Since weaponizing regions where pre-existing animosities are already strong is very easy, when the goal of ones operation is to generate destruction and perpetual war until such time as one can somehow come to dominate and control whatever region so targeted, then it becomes pretty easy to understand how the US could simultaneously be against Iranian/Shia influence in Syria and instead prefer to arm Sunni `rebels’ there, and at the same time want to play a militarized role aligning with Iran in `helping’ Iraq defend against some of the very same `rebels’ who got their first significant supply of weapons that made them `players’ in the region thanks to US policy and largess. (And to signal such commonality of interest with Iran while simultaneously telegraphing their regime-change imperative against Maliki in Iraq itself.)
For the Neocons in the employ of the Obama presidency who have outmaneuvered his official foreign policy team at every turn, arming both sides of such a conflagration is a great deal for them. Since neither they nor the Obama team really seem to care at all about the best interests of the Syrian or Iraqi citizenry generally, having these armed groups killing off civilians and combatants alike makes no difference except it allows for the politicians here at home in the US to claim they’re doing what’s best for the US because they are not sending US kids in uniform into these places to be killed. The fact that our leaders have no conscience and are doing more harm than good; well that doesn’t even register in the minds of most citizens here and is nowhere to be seen mentioned in the establishment media.
Who is pushing this among Obama’s advisors?
The fact is that $500 million in arms aid is sucker bait to get the US involved in trying to turn sunk costs into good investments. It did not work in Vietnam (either for the US or the Vietnamese who now export apparel to the US). It did not work in Iraq. It did not work in Afghanistan. It will only work in Libya if paradoxically the US butts out and lets the locals sort out their post-Gadhafi future.
In Syria, it runs counter to the direction of US policy in Iraq. WTF?
Why all of a sudden has the Obama foreign policy become absolutely deranged compared to the post-Syrian breakthrough period of late last year.
BTW, the risk of Syria having chemical weapons is now the same of that of other signatories who have eliminated all of their stockpiles. That is a major accomplishment that was given the anti-climactic treatment. Only Egypt, Israel, Myanmar, Angola, South Sudan, and North Korea to go. The diplomacy to do that would cost a lot less than $500 million.
True but this $500 million is also chasing the existing sunk costs. Those sunk costs likely far exceed $500 million but we won’t know because the Pentagon and CIA don’t actually do accounting, and even if they did, those accounting records would be top secret.
Does one have to be of a certain age to hear Vietnam echoes in this: Syria opposition sacks rebel command over graft allegations.
Oh! Yeah!
The way the Daily Kos crowd has been squealing over this one you would think that blood thirsty tyrant Obama the First had just thrown another thousand innocent babies into the gaping jaws of Moloch.
Your comment is similar to the same sort of crap I was subjected to for strenuously opposing the Iraq war in 2002/03. Those people all saw a quick invasion, topple Saddam, grab the WMD and oil fields, and send the bill to Iraq. They thought I was nuts and I thought they were ignorant, naive, and/or stupid.
Not yet, but that’s the direction the Republicans are trying to push him. I hope there’s a Wile E. Coyote pitfall for them like there was with the Syria war fever last fall.
I would really like to see a tougher policy of the USA withdrawing all military and no more monies for the Middle East. It is past time that we got totally out of there.The fighting is ingrained in the Middle Eastern culture and will never stop all together. These people hold grudges for generations and life on hate.
As compared with the people in the US still waving their Confederate flags and doing whatever they can to deny blacks the right to vote? That have been flipped out for almost six years now that a black man is POTUS?
Still recall Congressional Republicans crowing immediately after Clinton was impeached and declaring that it was “payback for impeaching Nixon.” I was like wtf? Those jerkwads didn’t even know that Nixon hadn’t been impeached — preferring to scuttle away before he was.
Blow up the US, impose as much destruction here as we have in Iraq, and you expect that USians would be singing kumbaya? Hah — most of us would be cringing in fear while the streets would be filled with armed thugs shooting it out.
Fighting is not ingrained in Middle East culture any more than it is ingrained in US culture. Politics uses culture as a screen for legitimizing military action. And times of little economic opportunity (the case for most of the world over the past 35 years) makes military employment attractive.
Ray, you miss the point. We aren’t there to help anyone. We are there to give energy corporations greater control of the natural resources (oil and gas) there.