ISIS

When is Congress going to ask Obama if he provided funding and training to what became ISIS?  Six months ago, they were “Syrian rebels”, and he wanted to support them.  Even then they were cutting the heads off of babies and raping their mothers, and even then he still wanted us in there to fight Assad, so why is it not only possible, but LIKELY that HE is the one who initiated this mess in his patent desire to topple Assad?

I will add the obvious: Assad has said he does not want us in there, and Obama has said if he fires his Russian anti-aircraft missiles at us he will be toppled.  This leads us to the utterly farcical and completely insane possibility that we may be at war with EVERYONE in Syria.  For what?

And all without Congressional authorization.

And to be clear, I support limited action in Iraq, which is nominally our ally, to keep ISIS from getting too comfortable.  I have in mind special operators sniping and ambushing, air strikes and the like.  Economic warfare would be acceptable as well.  If they are selling oil and reaping the profits, those rigs can be attacked.  The roads in their areas of operations can be destroyed.  Their leadership can be targeted.

But, again, how did we get here?  Did our President provide support to LITERAL baby killers, who never existed in Vietnam (at least on our side; the NVA regularly used children for suicide missions), but who definitely do exist now?  And again, for what?  What is our vital national interest in Syria?  I see none.

The best explanation I have seen is that the Gulf oil interests want to build a natural gas pipeline across Syria to compete with the Russians, and Assad–who presumably would reap huge benefits and money from this–is resisting them due to in effect being bought off by the Russians, who view this as economic warfare.

But that’s not our problem. It would be good to weaken the Russians, but war is not an acceptable means in my view to that end.