The Pentagon Fights Back

[Draggingtree]

The American Conservative : The Pentagon Fights Back The White House emphasis on humanitarianism may be turning some military leaders against Obama.

By PHILIP GIRALDI • February 9, 2016

Earlier this year, Seymour Hersh, America’s leading investigative journalist, published an intriguing article on U.S. policy towards the growing conflict in Syria and Iraq. “Military to Military,” which appeared in the London Review of Books, maintains that the Pentagon’s intelligence analysts have, since 2013, been advising against the White House policy of removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, arguing that it would create a power vacuum in the country that would inevitably be exploited by groups like ISIS. The analysts cited the examples of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya as examples of what might go wrong. They also argued that arming a group of “moderate” rebels to overthrow the Damascus government was delusional because even moderates were of necessity entering into “accommodations” with radical groups.

 

 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff also observed that the more extreme rebels were being supplied with weapons by feckless allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, who were exploiting the crisis in support of their own narrowly construed agendas.