Obama's plan to train moderate Syrian rebels suffers yet another setback as the leader of the group is abducted. New York Times.

A Syrian rebel near Aleppo. New York Times/Reuters

President Obama's plan to train moderate rebels to fight ISIS has suffered yet another setback after the leader of the rebels was abducted. New York Times. Nadeem Hassan, leader of the 54 rebels trained by the program was taken, along with his top deputy, by the al-Nusra front. The program to train rebels has largely failed at its goals. Most of the recruit pool is made up of radical Muslims who have little interest in fighting ISIS instead of the regime. Of the initial pool of 1200 recruits, the vast majority did not pass the vetting stage. Of the 120 that did, only 54 were successfully trained. The rest suffered from poor morale due to the fact that they were unsure of their mission and were unsure if they would receive air support from the United States. Al-Nusra has dealt serious blows to American plans in Syria before. Al-Nusra destroyed two U.S. allied groups, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Haraket Hazam, and captured weapons supplied to the group including TOW missiles. 

My Comment:

I've talked before about how this training program was a joke. I wrote back then that a program that cost $500 million to train 5400 troops hadn't even trained 60 of them. That's a failure so bad that it would be comical if it wasn't such a huge waste of taxpayer money. The program has not accomplished any of its goals and in a sane world, it would be shut down.

Of course, we do not live in a sane world. The abduction of Mr. Hassan and his deputy should be the final nail in the coffin for this program but I am sure it will continue. After all, the main purpose of the program was never to fight ISIS effectively. It was to make the Obama administration look like it was doing something about ISIS. Even if that something is so ridiculously ineffective that it hasn't even trained 100 troops. 

Obama does not really care about fighting ISIS. He has always been a domestic president and he has always viewed foreign policy as a distraction at best. At worst though, he is concerned about his "legacy". He want's to be known as the president that got us out of Iraq, even if it means that Iraq and Syria fall to ISIS. 

As for al-Nusra they have been especially proficient at countering our efforts in Syria. They have been more effective at doing so then ISIS or the Syrian government. They destroyed the moderate rebels we were supporting and now they have countered our training program as well. Though al-Nursa isn't as big or as threatening as ISIS is, they are a branch of al-Qaeda. And the fact that al-Qaeda has delivered some major setbacks to our plans in Syria should be a huge news story.

Of course, al-Nusra always gets out shined by ISIS. Though al-Nusra has had some major victories and control a decent amount of territories, they don't have the propaganda machine that ISIS does. ISIS has videos of them executing civilians, capturing towns and destroying their enemies. Al-Nusra does not, but they have plenty of notches in their belt. 

Out of any of the non-ISIS groups, al-Nusra has been the most effective at fighting the Syrian regime. They also united most of the other rebel groups, secular and Jihadist alike, under one banner and have put massive pressure on the Syrian government. And time and again they have been a thorn in our side in Syria. If ISIS didn't exist they would be our greatest enemy there, but as it stands right now, they are not even a main focus. 

So if training rebels won't work to fight ISIS, what are our options? Well, we don't have any that are good. The least objectionable would be to support the Syrian regime, since, at the very least, they aren't radical Islamists. But that is politically impossible and the regime seems to be on its last legs at this point anyways. One thing is for sure. Our campaign of bombing and training rebels is not working at all.