The New York Times reports under the headline, “France Says Syrian Rebels Need Aid to Fend Off ‘Chaos’”:
France’s foreign minister warned countries supporting the Syrian opposition on Monday that unless they honored their pledges of aid, the control of Syria could fall to militant Islamist groups.
“Facing the collapse of a state and society, it is Islamist groups that risk gaining ground if we do not act as we should,” said the minister, Laurent Fabius. “We cannot let a revolution that started as a peaceful and democratic protest degenerate into a conflict of militias.”
Okay, so let’s see…. France finances armed rebels in Syria, whose ranks include militant Islamist groups, in order for them to purchase arms, which cash ends up in the hands of said militant Islamist groups, and as a consequence of the escalation of the violence resulting from Western support for the rebels, Syria falls into chaos, and so the solution is to continue to finance and arm the armed rebels whose ranks include militant Islamist groups in order to prevent militant Islamist groups from gaining ground and taking over Syria?
Have I missed anything?
It isn’t just the French, of course. Further down in the article, the Times notes:
Arms are coming from Persian Gulf states like Qatar, however. Similar shipments to rebels in Libya ended up in the hands of Islamic militants, raising American fears of a repeat in Syria. Some of the most organized fighters battling government troops in the conflict, which has lasted nearly two years and caused the deaths of an estimated 60,000 people, are Islamists drawn from outside Syria to fight what they consider a global jihad.
What the Times declines to inform its readers is the fact that the U.S. has been coordinating the flow of arms from “Persian Gulf states like Qatar” and Saudi Arabia. The Times also declines to inform readers that the notion that arms could end up in the hands of Islamic militants in Syria (just like occurred in Libya) isn’t just a concern about something that could happen in the future, but something that has already happened — indeed, as the Times itself has previously reported (only to toss its own reporting down the memory hole), most of these arms have ended up in the hands of radical jihadists.
So whatever shall we do? Why, more of the same, of course! I mean, if something just isn’t working, but is just making the problem even worse, obviously, the best thing to do is to continue doing it at an even greater scale. Duh!
