Obama Administration Wants New Fantasy Rebels In Syria

The fantasist is a hard creature to tame, if for no other reason than he or she always has somewhere outside of reality to escape to when the facts get harsh. So it is with President Obama’s self-admitted fantasy of having moderate Syrian rebel forces aligned with US interests that can alter the reality on the ground in Syria. Despite abysmal results so far, Obama and company can not let go of the dream.

Rather then dropping the delusion of having “moderate” rebels prevail after the Free Syrian Army collapsed and joined with ISIS and Al Qaeda, the Obama Administration is trying to build a new moderate rebel army to fight ISIS, from scratch. Somehow the lesson of failing to have a force that can gain local support and overtake jihadists on the ground was to try an even more audacious plan of implanting fighters into the conflict from an organization wholly organized and structured by the US government.

This time will be different might as well be the slogan for US foreign policy in the Middle East. Policies that has led to wasting trillions of dollars, shedding oceans of blood, and having nothing really to show for it but contagious smirks at the UN when a US official says the word “democracy” into a microphone.

President Obama is never more intellectually formidable then when he channels his inner-Hamlet and critiques his own reasoning. His self-critique that “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists” were never going to be a real fighting force – i.e. the Free Syrian Army was doomed – turned out to be correct. Of course,this time the rebel fighters might not be former professionals but people who just want the money – like those that joined the Iraqi National Army. What could go wrong?

firedoglake