{"id":25815,"date":"2015-10-11T09:58:13","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T17:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=25815"},"modified":"2015-10-11T09:58:13","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T17:58:13","slug":"defense-spending-bill-600-million-more-to-train-moderates-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/11\/defense-spending-bill-600-million-more-to-train-moderates-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense Spending Bill: $600 Million More to Train ‘Moderates’ in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act allocated half a billion dollars to train “vetted,” “moderate” rebels to attack ISIS in Syria and also to overthrow the country’s sovereign government. This schizophrenic policy goal not surprisingly produced a total (after the others were killed, captured, or willingly gave their weapons to ISIS) of four or five<\/a> fighters. Even this micro force of five ultimately found itself in the depths of embarrassment as it was carjacked<\/a> by al-Qaeda. Half a billion dollars to have five guys carjacked! Put ten plumbers in a room and they could craft a more workable foreign policy than the entirety of the US foreign policy establishment.<\/p>\n

So how does Capitol Hill respond to such a total failure? Reassess the policy and cut the losses? Welcome the Russian entry into the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria? Look at Iraq and Libya and decide that regime change is just an illicit fantasy of the perpetual adolescents of the neoconservative movement?<\/p>\n

No!<\/p>\n

Currently sitting on President Obama’s desk is the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016 that, as could be predicted, doubles down on a bad bet and…wait for it!…authorizes $600 million<\/em> for the mythical anti-ISIS\/anti-Assad fighters. As it is not their money, why not open the national credit card wide to pursue a failed policy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The authorization is in Section 1225 of the bill<\/a>. Even as facts on the ground have suddenly gone very much against the US goal of fighting Assad and his enemies in the hopes that a replica of the US would magically emerge in Syria, the Beltway-ites will not back down (as long as it is other people’s blood and money).<\/p>\n

But chasing failed fantasies of world domination is not limited to Syria. The National Defense Authorization Act also contains three-quarters of a billion dollars to continue to train an Iraqi army that, after ten years and $25 billion dollars, turned and ran at the first sight of ISIS. There is nothing like pumping more money into a failed policy – even as the Iraqis are starting to see the writing on the wall and asking<\/a> the Russians to supplant the hapless Americans as their overlords and protectors.<\/p>\n

The truth is the US is really bad at empire. It will have to back down sooner or later. Will it be $600 million down the road or $6 trillion?<\/p>\n

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act allocated half a billion dollars to train “vetted,” “moderate” rebels to attack ISIS in Syria and also to overthrow the country’s sovereign government. This schizophrenic policy goal not surprisingly produced a total (after the others were killed, captured, or willingly gave their weapons to ISIS) of four or five […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-25815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25815"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25817,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25815\/revisions\/25817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25815"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=25815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}