Re:Hello, world: this is WikiTribune
by forapurpose on Thursday November 30, 2017 @08:42PM
(#15821294)
Trump has been doing more to support the rebels (I'm not sure why the parent put that word in quotes) than Obama. Until very recently, at least, the U.S. under Trump has been using rebel groups as ground forces in the fight against ISIS. Obama declined to arm the rebels in any significant way, in part because weapons tend to end up in the wrong hands, and he great restricted air support to protect civilians. People on the right criticized him heavily for both and Trump loosened restrictions on both. I saw reports that the rebels welcomed Trump's election in order to be rid of Obama's restrictions.
I've never seen anyone with expertise say that arms sent to the rebels significantly helped ISIS, or that supporting the rebels undermined the fight against ISIS. I did see plenty that indicated that the support of the rebels was ineffective and/or insufficient.
>> That doesn't mean ISIS took the U.S. by surprise,
> Obama says it did
You said in the GGP, "I don't believe that something like ISIS took us completely by surprise", and I was allowing that you might be right.
Of course it does. If Obama was supporting and involved in propping up Syrian "rebels" in the area, with groups of people and equipment switching sides, he was not effectively 100% committed to wiping it out. So the strategy was the same, but pumping resources fighting Assad in the region on another hand was undermining that strategy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/middleeast/cia-arms...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-rebe...
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/politics/syria-arming-rebels/i...
> The U.S., by its actions, clearly prefers Assad to ISIS:
Right but it only took until Trump was elected to stop feeding "rebels" fighting Assad. Well at least that's what the press releases say. So U.S. actions were a schizophrenic and certainly don't say anything "clearly".
> That doesn't mean ISIS took the U.S. by surprise,
Obama says it did http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/07/politics/isis-surprise-obama/i... . He blames CIA backhandedly:
"The ability of ISIL to initiate major land offensives that took Mosul, for example, that was not on my intelligence radar screen," [Obama told Zakaria]