Missing the point
by digby
The NY Times reported today:
The Central Intelligence Agency has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history — from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba. The continuing C.I.A. effort to train Syrian rebels is just the latest example of an American president becoming enticed by the prospect of using the spy agency to covertly arm and train rebel groups.
An internal C.I.A. study has found that it rarely works.
The still-classified review, one of several C.I.A. studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013 in the midst of the Obama administration’s protracted debate about whether to wade into the Syrian civil war, concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground.
Yeah, that's all well an good but it's completely irrelevant. The point of "arming the rebels" or the "freedom fighters" or the "anti-communists" or whatever is to get the US into the war. It's just a first step. Then you need advisors and bombing support and finally full scale intervention. I doubt anyone has ever believed that arming rebels anywhere would be the end of it.
I wish I could have heard the sputtering when those who had been making the case for it heard this since I'm sure they had been adamant that this was not a commitment for more military involvement. And yet, what else could it be? What else has it ever been?
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