Ongoing Middle Eastern Clusterf#*k

Syria By Senator Rand Paul (R KY)

The neocons loudly announced [in 2016] that regime change in Syria was their goal. Yet, even Hillary Clinton realized the problem when our arms, as well as Saudi and Qatari arms, were getting delivered in the hands of ISIS. In one of the Wikileaks emails, Hillary warned Podesta: “the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia . . . are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIS and other radical groups in the region.”

And yet, the deliveries of Western arms to jihadists went on and on for years.

Despite the evidence that many of the fighters opposing Assad were jihadists with an equal hatred for Israel and the United States, the weapons kept flowing.

Remember their call to arm the “moderate fighters?” Who can forget the $260 million spent to train [count 'em] sixty fighters, ten of whom were captured only minutes after they were sent into battle.

The neocons vociferously argued that Assad must go. Senators McCain and Graham argued that you couldn’t defeat ISIS without also defeating Assad. John Bolton went so far as to pontificate that "defeating the Islamic State" is "neither feasible nor desirable" if Assad remains in power. Actually, the opposite was true. Only when the mission changed from removing Assad to attacking ISIS did the tide finally turn. [With most of the heavy lifting courtesy of the Russians]

Max Abrahms and John Glaser wrote in the LA Times late last year that contrary to neocon dogma, ISIS “imploded right after external support for the ‘moderate’ rebels dried up.”

So, the neocons who argued that ISIS couldn’t or shouldn’t be defeated without first defeating Assad were wrong again.

In the 2016 presidential primary two candidates — myself and Donald Trump — declared that the Iraq War was a mistake, that we should not arm our enemies and that America didn’t have a dog in every fight.

I campaigned against the folly of recent neocon wars, the futility of nation building, and the bankruptcy, moral and literal, of the idea of policing the world. So did Donald Trump — for the most part.

So where do we go from here? Congress is still dominated by neocons. The Trump administration shows no sign of ending the Afghan war. If anything, President Trump has doubled down on our support for Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni civil war. Candidate Trump, who consistently voiced his displeasure with the Iraq War, has surrounded himself with generals still intent on finding military solutions where none exist.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ