The WHAT Papers?

Obama waives ban on giving arms to terrorists to help Syrian rebels! Is this outrageous? From a post from the radical right wing organization which is called, the Federalist Papers.


What follows is my response to a friend who made the original post:

It would be outrageous, if it was true. Since it is false, it is not outrageous.

It is clear that the US will send help to the non terrorist, secular factions of the opposition. There is no one "the opposition". There are many small groups all of which are attempting to overthrow the government. There is some danger that giving arms to these secular, non terrorist groups allows the possibility that those arms might stolen by terrorists, but that is not the same thing is giving weapons to terrorists.

Since no weapons will be given to terrorists, there is no violation of the UN resolution forbidding that act. Therefore there is no violation of international law.

It is also true that some Syrian experts believe that doing so will strengthen those secular groups, allowing them to suppress the terrorists--might, maybe. As usual, the matter is very complex and difficult. The Federalist papers oversimplify and flat-out state falsehoods. Terrorists are not being supplied weapons by the US, so the US has not violated the UN resolution not allowing us to supply weapons to terrorists.

As far as Benghazi goes, it is Republicans were responsible for that event. It is they who savagely cut the budget which allowed the defense department to, among other things, provide security for embassies. Strange, they never mention that fact. Hillary Clinton and the administration did the what they could with what little they had left after the Republicans raped the budget. There is little doubt that they might have done better, but they certainly would have done better if they had had the money to do so. The only conspiracy here is the Republicans' conspiracy to anger and frighten Americans into foolish behavior by arousing their emotions to such extremes that they shut down their higher brain functions.

The chance of American boots on the ground in Syria is zero. The will of the American people was clearly expressed on the issue of remote-control bombing, and had Russia and Syria not caved, giving us a greater victory than we had anticipated even by using weapons, even that matter would be a closed case at this time. The American people will never allow boots on the ground in Syria.

For me, Obama is a mixed case. He has done some fine things. He has done some terrible things. George Bush was almost 100% awful.