Ex-Administration Official Destroys Obama's Argument For Not Helping Syrian Rebels
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
Obama considers that to be "horsesh*t," saying the notion that arming the rebels would have made a difference has "always been a fantasy" because the opposition of "former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth" was fighting "a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, [and] a battle-hardened Hezbollah."
A former administration official has subsequently dismantled the president's argument.
Fred Hof, a former special advisor for transition in Syria under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, writes in Politico that the president's characterization ignores "decades of universal conscription and mandatory military service in Syria" by characterizing the armed opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad "as a hopeless collection of former butchers, bakers and candlestick makers."
Hof notes that recommendation to arm to the opposition was offered in some form by not only by Clinton, "but by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, CIA Director David Petraeus and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey."
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
And here's how Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy detailed the disingenuousness of Obama's statement to the Washington Post:
"There are tens of thousands of defectors from the Syrian military, many of whom fled to neighboring countries (some were put into a refugee camp in Turkey), while others stayed to fight as part of the overall FSA," Tabler said. "There was also the Supreme Military Council, the armed affiliate of the Syrian National Coalition, which also included a number of defected commanders. I met a lot of them in southern Turkey over the last few years."
The real problem, according to Tabler, was that "as assistance didn't't arrive, the defectors became disheartened so not sure where they all are at the moment."
And ISIS took full advantage of that vacuum, as stated by journalist Michael Weiss to Nada Bakos, a former CIA targeting officer in Iraq:
@nadabakos ISIS was savvy. They let FSA-aligned groups take the lead on anti-regime victories; they started state building and resource
- Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) August 12, 2014
@nadabakos preserving early. But competitive strands of support for different FSA factions, coupled with stalemate, made it easy for them
- Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) August 12, 2014
Hof, along with many current and former officials in the Obama administration, agree with that assessment.
"Had the requisite assistance started flowing two years ago, both Syria and Iraq would be in better places now," he writes. "Fantasy? Few in the administration-including at very senior levels-think so."
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