http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-i...
>Srian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.
2. As another poster noted, ISIS started in Iraq not Syria.
3. The Syrian factions which the US supported are opposed to ISIS and fought several early battles against them. Some US allies in the region sent aid to ISIS, but the US worked to limit and stop that aid.
4. The Pentagon is not backing Assad and still provides aid to anti-Assad groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria#Parami...
Wikileaks has reported that the US government has been covertly funding the Syrian opposition since 2006.[40]
2. Yes, ISIS started in Iraq, by not primarily by Iraqis. As I said, the Syrians who had been trained, armed, and radicalized by the CIA fled to Iraq when the coup failed and started ISIS.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isi... A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.
3. See #2 above, we clearly funded and armed what became ISIS.
4. You're right on this one. The reports of the two parties backed by the CIA and Pentagon fighting each other had me mixed up. That doesn't change the rest of the stuff above for which I've provided citations.
2. What happened in Syria is a civil war not a Coup d'etat.
>"the Syrians who had been trained, armed, and radicalized by the CIA fled to Iraq when the coup failed and started ISIS."
The civil war was going well for the rebels all throughout the rise of ISIS, so I'm curious when you thought this was happening? All sources agree that ISIS was formed in Iraq and then infiltrated into Syria.
"the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups - they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state”"
Lets parse that carefully as it is deceptively written:
* "the US and its allies" that is, the US had one policy and its allies had another, but the author chooses to group them together to blame the US for activities undertaken by US allies which the US actively opposed and ran counter to US interests.
* "supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups" while true the US was going out of its way to arm the less extreme elements (unlike some US allies).
* "they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state”", that is, a DIA intelligence assessment considered the possibility that the Sunni population of Iraq might break away from Iraq. They didn't support this possibility, just said it could happen (and it did). This state need not be "The Islamic State", but author choose the name "Islamic State" to make it sound like the US supported the Islamic State.
The author of that piece is being willfully misleading. Note that it was published in the Opinion section of the guardian. Even with all that the author supports my claim that ISIS started in Iraq.
There is no evidence that Clinton backed or supported a coup in Syria. The US did support elements of a popular uprising in Syria during the Arab spring, and then provided and continues to provide military support to Anti-Assad factions after Assad viciously cracked down on the uprising. A coup d'etat is a very different beast.
The refugee crisis is a result of Assad and Anti-Assad factions acting to change the demographics of Syria via ethnic cleansing. It is unclear, but seems unlikely to me, that the refugee crisis would be lower if the Anti-Assad factions had gotten less support from the US. The refugee crisis would have just happened over a shorter period of time. To avoid increased US involvement Assad regulated his behavior somewhat (see Chemical Weapons controversy). It seems likely to me that the US by providing limited support to Anti-Assad factions acted to limit/control military support given by gulf nations to the more extreme Anti-Assad elements. Such support would likely have made the more radical elements of the civil war much more powerful and likely increased the flow of refugees.
US involvement in the Syrian Civil War did in certain circumstances limit the refugee crisis and has allowed refugees to return home. For example the US/YPG defense of Sinjar Mountain in N. Iraq allowed refugees to escape genocide, then with the recapture of Sinjar, allowed refugees to return home. Another example would be halting of the Islamic State's campaign in N. Syria, which if continued would have generated hundreds of thousands of refugees. Not only was the Islamic State's advance halted, but it has been rolled back significantly with large numbers of refugees returning home. This would not have been possible without US support to the factions (YPG/SDF) fighting the Islamic State.
We can debate the exact nature of US responsibility for the refugee crisis, but (1). any direct responsibility for foreign policy at this level is with the President not the Secretary of State, (2). there was no coup d'etat attempted or otherwise in Syria.