Congress, International, Military, Politics, Science

White House Seeks Half A Billion Dollars To Train Syrian Rebels

FSA_FighterPresident_Barack_ObamaAs both Iraq and Afghanistan meltdown after spending $4 trillion and losing thousands of lives, the Obama Administration wants to pour $500 million into training and equipping the Syrian rebels. Ignore the fact that the Syrian rebels have been accused of human rights violations and atrocities (as has the regime). The government insists that U.S. weapons and money will go to the “right” forces — just ignore all those pictures of ISIS rebels driving around with U.S. equipment in Iraq.

President Obama wants $500 million from Congress to help “train and equip appropriately vetted elements of the moderate Syrian armed opposition.” It is another investment after bad returns on the $4 trillion in prior wars in this area. It is like watching a bad gambler at Vegas screaming that the next hand will pay off.

My primary concern is that we are still cutting basic environmental, scientific, and educational programs due to lack of state and federal funding. In Fairfax county (where my kids go to public school), the county has ordered a disastrous series of cuts of hundreds of positions, teacher raises (despite one of the lowest salary levels in the area), and a further increase in class size. My kids already go to school with an absurd 30 plus kids in a single class with a single teacher. All of this for the need of a fraction of what Congress will pour into Syria with little thought. Obviously, the cuts will hurt Fairfax in the long run which has always drawn families to the area due to its schools. I heard a Maryland official on the radio celebrating the cuts in Fairfax as promising a exodus to Maryland which continues to put a higher priority on education. The greater concern however is that, while other countries are increasing their investment in training students for the modern workforce, the U.S. is continuing to fall in the rankings in education. We are frittering away our future by funding wars rather than education and science needed to keep us competitive in the world market.

It is all perfectly otherworldly as these requests are treated an done deals. Half a billion for rebels seems a no brainer but a fraction of that for schools or science or the environment is viewed as excessive and highly problematic.
Source: CNN

95 thoughts on “White House Seeks Half A Billion Dollars To Train Syrian Rebels”

  3. Bill Seff: “Will Democrats in Congress vote for continuing war ? Will they allow Obama to con them like Bush?”

    There’s no voting for continuing war. The war over there is a fact of life, with or without us. War is determinative change. If there is a vote or at least a debate in Congress, it will be over whether the US has a stake in influencing the course of that determinative change.

    Bush didn’t con Congress into war. First, 9/11 happened, which changed our national security posture. The War on Terror generally and OEF specifically were consensus. Second, the Saddam problem and the procedure to resolve the Saddam problem were mature by the close of the Clinton administration. Bush’s case against Saddam was simply Clinton’s case against Saddam carried forward, updated with the 9/11 threat lens and the accelerating collapse of the ad hoc post-ODF ‘containment’. Every Congressman who served during Clinton’s whole-presidency struggle with Saddam already understood the Saddam problem as well as or better than Bush did. Congressional support for Bush on Iraq simply carried forward the Congressional support for Clinton on Iraq.

  8. My understanding of the Syria problem is baselined on this White House brief from last summer:
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/background-briefing-senior-administration-officials-syria

    Plus this explanation of Syria by the estimable Ambassador Ryan Crocker, also from last summer:
    http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/containing-fire-syria

    The WH brief states “what we will continue to do is pursue a strategy in Syria that seeks to strengthen the opposition, including through the provision of many different types of assistance. And we are coordinating our efforts and providing that assistance with other countries in the region and other allies and partners.”

    I wonder what Obama’s 500 million dollar request aims to accomplish differently from his standing engagement with anti-Assad forces, such as it is.

    Crocker’s urgent recommendation last summer was we shouldn’t intervene in Syria but we must guard Iraq from destabilization and violence spreading from Syria, which had already started.

  9. What a disgrace. Will Democrats in Congress vote for continuing war ? Will they allow Obama to con them like Bush? Will they believe only good Syrian rebels will be equipped with weapons? Let’s see how Obama pulls off this scam.

  12. randyjet: you are confusing “venture capitalist” with government ownership of utilities.

    Here is a simplification: When someone has a great business idea, he can go to a venture capitalist. Most new business ideas fail, so it is a very risky loan. Venture capitalists are experts at spotting great business plans with a good chance of success. They know how to increase revenues and cut costs for that fledgling business to grow and thrive. For example, Romney had approximately a 78% success rate. Private funds are invested in private companies, creating jobs and increased tax revenues.

    Without venture capitalists, people without serious resources could never create successful big businesses. We no longer have a class restriction on success, where you have to be born with money to make money.

    Now compare this with Obama. He invested absurd amounts of taxpayer money to campaign bundlers who had “green” corporations, in a business-as-usual quid pro quo. Then he gave those bundlers even more pork in tax subsidies. It was a DRAIN on taxpayers, rather than an increase in the private sector.

    You are to recall that Obama has never run a company. Never run a small or a large business. And yet he picked the winners to receive public venture capitalist funds. The criteria was not based on an excellent business plan. It was based on pure cronyism. That created scandals like Solyndra, which went bankrupt after taxpayers gave $390 million, and created zero jobs. Steve Wesley raised half a million dollars for Obama’s campaign, and was rewarded with a seat on the Advisory Board for the Secretary of Energy, and his company, Tesla’s, stock increased after Obama announced a $7500 rebate for electric car sales. Then there is EnerDel, maker of lithium batteries. It received a $118 million energy grant. Right after Biden toured the plant, 3 of its executives were given bonuses totaling $750,000, and then they filed bankruptcy. Beacon Power got almost $50 million to build a green energy plant, and then filed bankruptcy. It had been rated “junk bond” status prior to the grant. First Solar got a shocking $3 billion, and then fired 30% of its workforce.

    The list just goes on and on. Obama handed out billions of dollars in taxpayer money to green industries, which looked great, that were owned by political donors. And many of them went belly up.

    Because that’s what happens when you dole out money to cronies instead of to good business plans.

    I have little interest in ventures that create enormous drains on taxpayers without providing tangible benefits that, for example, a hydroelectric dam would.

    There is a philosophical criticism of government playing venture capitalist. How is it fair for the government to pick winners and losers? For them to choose one company, over another, in the same industry, solely based on how much they donated to a particular political party? How is it fair for conservatives to lose out when a Democrat is in office, and for Democrats to lose out when Republicans are in office?

    You know who should pick winners and losers? The market. Companies succeed when they have a good business plan, and make products or services that customers actually want. When the government steps in, they make products and services nobody wants, and then they fine people for not buying them. And then people overpay and they under deliver. Hence Obamacare.

    Organic produce used to be very hard to find. Now it is mainstream, and business is absolutely booming. If you can’t find organic near you, well, you can order it online. And no government forced that to happen. It happened through the will of its customers.

    Ceterum censeo Obamacare delendo est. “And furthermore, in my opinion, Obamacare should be repealed.”

  13. It is all perfectly otherworldly as these requests are treated an done deals. Half a billion for rebels seems a no brainer but a fraction of that for schools or science or the environment is viewed as excessive and highly problematic.

    It’s called rampant militarism run amok.

  14. And old saying of mine:
    “There’s a killing to be had at making WAR”

    It’s Freudian for, I kill you and get paid in the process…
    … AKA, American warfare.

  15. There is a reason America is the most feared around the world…
    … And it ain’t because we come in Peace. Now take us to your leader (because we intend to depose and exile him so as to replace him with someone more friendly to our Corporate interests).

  17. Paul C. Schulte

    Nick – I agree with you. Arm and train the Kurds. That will keep at least three countries in turmoil.
    =====================
    The Oil-Qaeda twins.

  18. As usual, USA is on the frontlines in waging, in Islam there are various kinds of jihad, and it is specifically stated that arming, training, funding warriors is the equivalent of being a warrior for jihad in the way of Allah. That is what USA continues to do, sadly.

  19. traveling limey: “The GI is NOT saving America or the world. He is messing it up!”

    You’re reversing the cause and effect.

    A reliable rule of thumb is if the job is easy, then American soldiers won’t be needed for it.

    For example, in early post-war Iraq, soldiers at first took a limited, hands-off security (SASO) role in support of the IGOS, NGOs, and other USG agencies who would manage the post-war transition. Although the CPA was DoD, it was civilian DoD, not uniformed DoD.

    But as the job in Iraq became harder as the insurgency attacked the peace operations, including and especially humanitarian aid workers, the NGOs betrayed their purpose and fled from the Iraqi people, and IGOs and other USG agencies lost their freedom of movement, more of the peace-building job in Iraq devolved to soldiers.

    Soldiers, who are warfighters first and foremost, didn’t particularly want the job of peace operator in Iraq that peaked with the COIN “Surge”, but when a job is both necessary and becomes dangerously hard enough, guess who does it. Guess who’s always done it on behalf of people and nation, from before there was a nation. The US military is actually older than the US and was necessary first in order to do the heavy lifting for the US to be born.

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