My first reaction to news earlier this month that the Syrian government had been overthrown was, how much did we have to do with it; how involved was the CIA; and how much is it going to cost.
As with Saddam and Gaddafi before him, we know that Assad was no libertarian hero. But unleashing an army dedicated to establishing an Islamic state in once-secular Syria hardly seems like a good idea to me.
As with President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment after Saddam’s overthrow, getting rid of Assad will prove to be the easy part. Rebuilding Syrian society after the destruction of the country will cost billions and will likely be about as successful as our “liberation” of Libya, which is still a failed, terrorist-dominated state more than a decade later.
In 2017 the Los Angeles Times published an article that, sadly, speaks volumes about the insanity of our interventionist foreign policy. “In Syria, militants armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA,” read the headline. How does it make any sense that the Pentagon is fighting a proxy war with the CIA on Syrian soil? What’s worse is that the American people are forced to pay for this Pentagon versus CIA war and then forced to pay again to rebuild the country after all the destruction.
The Syrian people will feel the cost in more than just dollars.
How involved is the US government in the overthrow of the Syrian government?
For the past ten years the US has controlled the areas of Syria oil and wheat production, stealing resources that we have no legal claim on. The combination of resource theft and extreme sanctions hollowed out Syrian society over the past ten years, so when the terrorists sprang forth from Idlib a few weeks ago there was little resistance.