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A comment on The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels. Parent comment

Re:The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms... by phyller on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @11:11AM (#15238977)
The article says they are theoretically only arming groups that are fighting against ISIS. I'm pretty sure if they can defeat them on the ground without committing American troops (airstrikes can only do so much) and only spending $1 billion dollars they are going to consider that a big win.

The sentiment of this question explains why even further. ISIS does very bad stuff and is a major problem, and we can all wonder why the west doesn't do more to stop them because they clearly have the ability to do so. But then the moment the US gets really involved, everyone is going to shift blame to them for everything. I don't condone secretive actions like this myself, but considering the US's global influence and capability, if they weren't doing something about ISIS the question could easily be restated "What does the US government gain by allowing extremists to rape and pillage the middle east?"

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Re:The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms... by raverbashing on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @11:16AM (#15239031)
"only arming groups that are fighting against ISIS"

Yeah, a lot of "moderate rebels" (that are slightly less theocratic than ISIS)

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Re:The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms... by tboyd47 on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @11:35AM (#15239272)
Unfortunately, the US military has transferred the Cold War strategy of "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" to radical pseudo-Islamic militant groups. That's not going to work so well because you might have two groups that have exactly the same beliefs except they gave allegiance to a different imam so they consider each other to be kuffar.
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Re:The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms... by phyller on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @11:21AM (#15239093)
Yea. I think every employee of a 3 letter agency should be required to write a scholarly paper on the term "blowback" and have it peer reviewed before they get to spend any money.
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Re:The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms... by icebraining on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @11:54AM (#15239493)
The US already has troops on the ground, at least a few members of the special forces are working with the SDF/YPG on the front lines.
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