The Coming Collapse of the Free Syrian Army

The Coming Collapse of the Free Syrian Army

We were sold a bill of goods by the neocons in which they promised a peaceful and prosperous Iraq at minimal cost to the US taxpayer.  Not only was the war more expensive by a magnitude of about sixty times what they had promised, but the end state that they promised is now farther away than ever and would cost so much that the ship of empire would be crashed onto the rocks were Iraq War 3.0 to begin in earnest.  Right now the US is happy to have created enough chaos that the Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis will be battling the way they always have for the last 1000 years, except with more training and weapons as the American taxpayer is now unemployed and in foreclosure.

Obama wants us to believe that the troops they are intending on training and the target of US largess is the moderate Free Syrian Army.  This is a lie.  The FSA has been thoroughly and completely absorbed by ISIS and Al Nusra.  There is no need for al Nusra or ISIS to even try to infiltrate the FSA because there is no FSA.  It is an illusion.  If the US tries to arm and train the FSA, you can bet that all the arms and training will be going directly to ISIS.

If between Assad’s military, the Iraqi Shiite-dominated Army, Iran’s Quds involvement and Hezbollah all fighting ISIS, you can bet that no matter how much money, weapons and training the US provides to the FSA, it will be thoroughly aligned with ISIS or be seen as a force fighting on the side of the US, Assad, Iran and Hezbollah against ISIS.  It will serve as no more of an obstacle to Assad than the MEK did to Iran.  You can be sure ISIS will use the FSA to its interests against Assad, but it would destroy the FSA and seize all it weapons in a fortnight were the FSA involved in a force-on-force battle against ISIS regardless of if the US provided the FSA US airpower or not.

Some of the questions Americans should be asking their government is:

1. What is the total strength of the FSA?To what extent will the FSA be battling ISIS?

2. If Iran, Iraq, the US and Hezbollah can’t defeat ISIS, what makes the US think that the FSA will be able to defeat ISIS?

3. The US spent a decade arming, training and funding the Iraqi military to the tune of tens of billions of dollars only to have it collapse when faced with a small ISIS force that not only seized hundreds of US Humvees, many dozens of the US’s heavy artillery pieces, scores of US advanced anti-armor weapons and tons of ammunition, but also raided the Iraqi central bank and walked off with $500 million while seizing oil wells across Iraq and Syria.  What exactly is going to stop ISIS from crushing an FSA given that the FSA will have received much less training and a much more limited measure of US weapons and other types of lethal support?  Let’s not forget that the FSA now currently exists in name only.  And who is going to vet the FSA?  Does anyone actually think there won’t be blue-on-blue attacks as there are in Afghanistan?  It seems we are kidding ourselves about our victory in Afghanistan and we are now kidding ourselves about an FSA army.

The fact is that the FSA was unable to even engage in any talks with the Assad regime because there was no FSA army except for a small group of individuals the US mustered to serve as its front.  Everyone knew at this point the FSA was a shell organization and it doubtful the US could now even muster a shell organization that would not need to flea Syria after being caught between ISIS and Syria.

The current US bombing campaign against ISIS has killed many hundreds of civilians.  To defeat ISIS the US will have to kill many tens of thousands more.  This is the exact reason the US gives for attempting to gain support for direct US military involvement against Assad.  Make no bones about this US intervention, we are talking about the US waging direct war against Syria.  

There has been a sustained cover-up of the Sunni civilian casualties during the US bombing campaign in which the US tries to not coordinate too much with Iran or Syria, but any attack on ISIS logically benefits Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

The fact is that ISIS now wants to drag the US back into Iraq.  The bombing campaign is boosting ISIS recruitment and the US has swelled ISIS ranks with its Sunni civilian body count even though most Sunni Iraqis abhor ISIS.  If the US commits some unit that is defeated and captured, you can bet there will be clamoring for a full-scale Desert Storm-type invasion.  This is the only thing that will temporarily stem the tide against ISIS.

It seems the US made the same mistake as Saddam except in the opposite direction.  Instead of disbanding the Iraqi military Iraq should have been expanded by fifty percent with Iraqi Shiites.  Fifty percent of the Sunni military leadership should have been allowed to retire with enhanced benefits.  This would have been far cheaper than what the cost now is.  Bush took Iraq from sectarian Sunni domination to Shiite domination.  Meanwhile, the US did whatever it could to discredit Sadr who supported a nationalist Iraq as opposed to sectarian Iraq.  He wanted no more Iranian influence than he wanted US influence. But, the US thought a nationalistic Iraq under Sadr was a bad idea.  Now the US is confronting the result of that decision.

The other funny thing is that with the US Keystone XL pipline there is no reason to try to dominate Iraq and control its oil.  The money saved by ending the military-industrial complex spending including Homeland security would have allowed for subsidizing US oil production at a tiny fraction we now spend trying to prevent the very terrorism we ended up funding.  But, it seems we will now forever be on permanent war footing much to the benefit of the national security state and the warfare-welfare state.

Now the US wants to train FSA in all the neighboring gulf states.  But, this means that Iraq may end up as a forward base for an Iraq-Iran alliance against Saudi Arabia with Russia providing advanced weapons to Syria that will also find their way down to Hezbollah.  It seems the US is intent on burning down the Middle East and follows one bad idea after another. 

If the US jumps in to assist the FSA in fighting ISIS, ISIS will be able to wage a massive terrorist campaign that would last for a thousand years given the resources they now have.  Another question the US has no answer for is: Just how much control does Saudi Arabia still exercise over ISIS now that it knows it can be a self-sustaining organization?  It may end up that the US is battling ISIS in Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Saudi monarchy that has created their own Frankenstein.

If anyone thinks the insanity is reaching an end and all consequences and eventualities are now known, they are deluding themselves.  One thing Rumsfeld did now, though it seemed he understood little else, was that there were “Unknown Unknowns”.  It seems it is this qualifier that will dominate US foreign policy until we are in direct war with China and Russia and history will look back on the events and wonder how the US could have been so stupid.

While the elite will watch from afar and hide behind desks, deferments and privilege, regular Americans will continue to die as the military increasingly becomes the only opportunity in a collapsing empire.  So, let’s watch the fireworks as the US crosses over to fund Sunni sectarianism as the FSA ends up giving rise to an even more powerful ISIS.  Just don’t say nobody warned you.  The chicken hawks were warned before going into Iraq, now they are being warned again.  It is funny when a blue-collar worker knows more and has better accuracy in his predictions than the planners at the Pentagon, State Department and White House.  I would be willing to put my record up against any of those in the neocon establishment that now seems to control US policy.