Update to this story. One of the many things that made no sense under Obama. At least not if your concern was what was in the best interests of the United States and its allies.
Via Daily Caller:
The Trump administration is reportedly ceasing the CIA’s support of Syrian rebels fighting against the Bashar al-Assad regime.
That proposal did not sit well with Washington’s foreign policy establishment.
In multiple tweets, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a well-known hawk, said the move, “would be a complete capitulation to Assad, Russia, and Iran.”
An anonymous government official told The Washington Post, which broke the news Wednesday, said the cession of funds would announce “Putin won in Syria.”
The Washington Post itself characterized the idea in its report as an abdication to the Kremlin that holds no promising benefit for America’s national interest.
There was much speculation that this change in policy was brought about by the previously undisclosed second meeting President Trump had with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit. The implication of that claim is that there was something nefarious in that deal that served Putin’s interest to build an evil empire.
The reaction from pundits and think tankers was sharply different to how they reacted to Trump launching a missile strike in April against an Assad-controlled airbase in retaliation for a purported chemical weapons attack. As CNN host Fareed Zakaria put it, “Donald Trump became president” when he attacked Assad.
Nobody from the foreign policy blob is now reiterating that sentiment after Wednesday. Instead, we now get doom and gloom about how we hurt our interests by “capitulating” to Russia and Iran.
But in reality, Trump pulling back aid for these rebels serves our national interest. For one, how has America’s support for these rebels benefited us over the past six years? Assad is still in power, and nearly all of the rebels have become hardened Islamists in the ensuing years.
The “moderate” Syrian rebel meme is no longer credible when the strongest opposition to the Assad regime at the moment are Salafists who wish to impose sharia law and align with the al-Qaeda-backed group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. (It’s now bigger and rebranded itself as Tahrir al-Sham in order to get off the U.S.’s terror list.)