Presidential candidates must answer uncomfortable questions about Syria

Trevor Timm for Guardian UK

At the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night, there will certainly be a question about the increasing chaos in Syria. But before the candidates opine based off questions from pundits inevitably itching for more war in the Middle East, maybe the first question should be: why can’t we have an honest debate about Syria?

Much of the talk over the last few weeks – beyond Russia’s military entrance into the country, already saturated with foreign countries bombing it – has been the US’s failed Syrian rebel training program. In late 2014, Congress approved $500m for the US military to train 5,000 “moderate” Syrian soldiers. Instead, we got four or five (literally), and the program was promptly cancelled.

Steadfastly ignored, however, has been the CIA’s parallel weapons funneling program that has been steadily feeding arms into the country for two or three years (much longer than the Congressional approved program). Unlike the military program, which was only focused on Isis, the CIA program is arming rebels who are attacking the Assad regime directly, while most of the media pretends that the US is refusing to take on Assad at all.

Who backs whom in the Syrian conflict

For example, in President Obama’s interview on 60 Minutes on Sunday night, correspondent Steve Kroft spent almost five minutes on the topic of Syria, while completely avoiding the CIA elephant in the room. But the front page piece of Monday’s Washington Post about CIA anti-tank missiles, which may have precipitated Russia’s entrance into Syria in the first place, tells a vastly different story. (By the way, at least some of these suddenly successful rebels are working alongside with al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaida.)

The CIA’s foray into Syria is almost always ignored during the Syria debate, despite the fact that it seems to be increasingly dictating facts on the ground (or at least that’s what “anonymous US officials” have been suddenly telling multiple media outlets in the last week). When Congressman Tom Udall asked about it during a Congressional hearing last year he was promptly shut down, and it hasn’t been until the last few days that the media has paid it any attention at all.

In addition to the Washington Post, the Associated Press also reported that the CIA program is alive and well late last week. Funny how all of a sudden anonymous administration officials are so willing to talk about the program no one would mention for months!

While the article focused on the supposed sudden success of the CIA program, they also quoted Syria expert Joshua Landis, who said this:

“Probably 60 to 80% of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates.” While others have questioned the largeness of that number, no one doubts that Isis has picked up a massive amount of weapons from the US, either mistakenly dropped to them or abandoned by the many failed armies we have trained and armed over the past decade.

But is it really a good idea that we’re effectively engaging in a proxy war with Russia without any public debate about it? As the Post pointed out, Obama insisted last month: “we’re not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia”. How exactly we’re not turning Syria into a proxy war when we’re pour arms into the country to fight Russia’s now-military partner is anyone’s guess.

As the Post described it:

“The plan, as described by administration officials, was to exert sufficient military pressure on Assad’s forces to persuade him to compromise – but not so much that his government would precipitously collapse and leave a dangerous power vacuum in Damascus.” That is quite the needle to thread!

This brings up several unanswered questions for Clinton or any of the candidates who have called for military action against Assad, and are also now blindly calling for a no-fly zone and an escalation of the already tragic war. Do they think the CIA – or any US agency – should be funneling weapons into Syria without the American public’s knowledge?

Are they OK committing 70,000 US military personnel (and untold billions of dollars) to make it happen, like just-retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Jim Dempsey told Congress two years ago would be required? Are they OK basically starting an open war with Assad, given that we’ll need to destroy the Syrian air force to make it happen? And are they willing to engage in direct military combat with Russia – a nation with thousands of nuclear warheads – now that their planes are flying over Syrian skies as well?

Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates and George W Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined the conventional-wisdom chorus calling for a no-fly zone in Syria this week as well. With pretty much all the usual suspects claiming this is a good idea, maybe we should pause and consider that these people have been wrong about everything for the past decade and that more war is not always the best option.

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