US ends CIA arms program to Syrian rebels.

An FSA fighter in Deraa. Reuters. 

The United States has ended a controversial CIA program to arm Syrian rebels. Reuters. President Barack Obama had started the program in 2013 to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but the program was widely regarded as a complete failure. Many of the rebels trained by the CIA defected to ISIS, al-Nusra or other Islamic militant groups. The descion will likely be praised in Russia who has always supported Bashar al-Assad. The descion was made before the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit. Donald Trump also was a harsh critic of the program during the election campaign and hinted that he would end the program. The United States will continue to support other groups in Syria, most importantly the Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces. 

My Comment:

Once again the news media is reading this story wrong. While looking for a decent source for this post I had to read a lot of different articles, almost all of which tried to imply that this descion was done as part of the vast Russia conspiracy in the Trump White House. The most hysterical of them are trying to imply that this was the result of a "secret" (ie standard and announced to the press) dinner meeting with the G20 leaders where Trump and Putin talked, even though the descion was made before July 7th, when G20 took place. 

There is no doubt that Russia will be pleased with this action. They do, after all, support Bashar al-Assad and his regime and were never happy that we were trying to overthrow him. There is hope that this action could result in better relations with Russia, which is, of course, a very very good thing. Of course the US media would disagree. They seem to think that any action that pleases Russia is practically treason, even if it has benefits to the United States as well. 

But that makes zero sense. The people that are complaining about this descion are greatly downplaying how stupid this program is. It was, quite frankly, an absolute disaster. Time and time again these rebels betrayed us or simply failed. Many of them either abandoned their weapons to ISIS or al-Nusra or even joined the terror groups taking their weapons with them. And the ones that didn't were wiped out by the same groups. 

And how soon we forgot how badly these rebels did. Not only did we only ever train a couple hundred troops, we spent $500 million doing it. And what did we get for it? Negative value. Not only was our money completely wasted, we ended up helping our enemies who either wiped out our allies or convinced them to switch sides. 

Even if the program did have any value whatsoever, it wouldn't make much sense to continue it. Why? Because Assad, Russia and Iran are very obviously winning the war. Once the city of Aleppo fell, there was no hope of a non-terrorist group taking over from Assad. The secular groups were largely wiped out while the terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Nusra remain. 

It makes zero sense to continue to support rebels who have no chance of winning. I guess if we went to war with Russia, destroyed the Syrian government and attacked Iran we could potentially allow the Syrian rebels to win. That would probably result in nuclear war and would kill millions of innocent people and basically end civilization. And, of course, even if we did all that, there is still no guarantee that the rebels would be the beneficiary. Instead it would be the terror groups like ISIS and al-Nusra. Removing Assad at this point is giving Syria over to the terrorists, which is the worst outcome possible from the Syrian Civil War. 

Basically, those complaining about the end of this program want it to continue despite the fact that we are wasting money on troops that aren't loyal on a war that isn't winnable on a cause that doesn't really benefit us even if we went all out and made the huge sacrifice in lives and treasure needed to win. Ending the program saves us money and allows us to focus on the rebel groups that are actually fighting ISIS and has the added benefit of reducing tensions with Russia which have been risen to cold war levels y the US media and the outgoing Obama administration. 

Make no mistake, Russia doesn't have our best interests in mind. Putin is many things but he's not a fool and he wouldn't ever want to help us in a way that hurts himself. That being said there will be times where Russia's interests and our own will align. Right now that is the case in Syria, so it makes no sense to continue the failed Obama rebel training program.