{"id":48982,"date":"2014-05-28T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T12:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=48982"},"modified":"2014-05-28T06:36:37","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T10:36:37","slug":"yeah-thats-just-a-fking-brilliant-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=48982","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, That\u2019s Just a F**king Brilliant Idea . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Multiple news sources (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2014\/05\/28\/obama-may-approve-project-to-train-and-equip-moderate-syria-rebels\/\">Fox News<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/article\/20140527\/NEWS08\/305280048\/U-S-nears-decision-training-Syrian-rebels\"><em>Army Times<\/em><\/a>) are reporting that the current Administration is \u201cnearing a decision\u201d on providing training and equipment for &#8220;moderate elements&#8221; of the Syrian opposition.<\/p>\n<p>And yeah:\u00a0 that &#8220;training&#8221; part means &#8220;boots on the ground&#8221;.\u00a0 As in Soldiers\/Sailors\/Airmen\/Marines.\u00a0 Troops.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, I get it that Assad is a thug, and hates the US. But the same is true of at least half of the Syrian opposition. And Assad doesn\u2019t have links to al Qaeda, either \u2013 like many elements in the Syrian opposition do.<\/p>\n<p>So I can&#8217;t really see how we have any proverbial &#8220;dog in that fight&#8221;; either way it turns out, we&#8217;re all but guaranteed to have a regime running Syria that hates the US.\u00a0 And a regime led by the Syrian opposition raises the possibility of Syria&#8217;s WMD&#8217;s falling into al Qaeda&#8217;s (or another Islamic extremist group&#8217;s) hands.\u00a0 Frankly, I think we may be better off with Assad the Bastard running that patch of Middle Eastern dirt.<\/p>\n<p>If you seriously believe that at least some of the arms and equipment we provide to the Syrian opposition won\u2019t end up in the hands of al Qaeda-linked elements \u2013 or that we won\u2019t end up training a large number of folks who end up working with or for al Qaeda in the future &#8211; I\u2019d like to talk to you about real estate. I can give you one helluva deal on a bridge.<\/p>\n<p>This is IMO a monumentally stupid idea. Regarding Syria, Shakespeare had it right around 400 years ago: \u201cA plage o\u2019 both your houses.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Multiple news sources (Fox News, the Army Times) are reporting that the current Administration is \u201cnearing a decision\u201d on providing training and equipment for &#8220;moderate elements&#8221; of the Syrian opposition. And yeah:\u00a0 that &#8220;training&#8221; part means &#8220;boots on the ground&#8221;.\u00a0 As in Soldiers\/Sailors\/Airmen\/Marines.\u00a0 Troops. Hey, I get it that Assad is a thug, and hates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,9,223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-foreign-policy","category-syria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-cK2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}