{"id":62582,"date":"2015-11-01T11:30:47","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T16:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=62582"},"modified":"2015-11-01T07:28:28","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T12:28:28","slug":"throwing-good-money-after-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=62582","title":{"rendered":"Throwing Good Money After Bad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stripes today has an article<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 indicating the US Deputy SECSTATE has announced US pledges of another nearly $100M to support “Syria’s opposition”.\u00a0 Presumably, that’s the “non ISIS”, moderate Syrian opposition – assuming any of those creatures still exist today.\u00a0 The aid will go to “support local and provincial councils, civil society activists, emergency services and other needs on the ground inside Syria.”<\/p>\n

Well, whatever isn’t stolen or diverted theoretically will, anyway.\u00a0 I’m guessing a fair chunk will end up used for other purposes – and possibly even in ISIS’s coffers.\u00a0 But maybe I’m wrong.<\/p>\n

The article goes on to say that Saudi Arabia “wants Assad gone”, and that the timing of his departure – along with the departure of “foreign fighters” – are major sticking points in ending the Syrian civil war.\u00a0 Gee, ya think?\u00a0 I’d have never guessed.\u00a0 How about we file that bit of wisdom in the “No Sh!t” category?<\/p>\n

Of course<\/span> Assad’s departure is a sticking point – he has no intention of departing, and he’s currently running part of Syria.\u00a0 Further, both Assad and those “foreign fighters” have their own interests in being there, and in preventing an ISIS takeover of Syria – kinda like we do, actually.\u00a0 So that’s obviously a “sticking point”, too.\u00a0 Sheesh.<\/p>\n

This new pledge brings to $500M the amount the US will have spent supporting the Syrian opposition since 2012.\u00a0\u00a0 Now it seems to me we could have spent all that money far more effectively, given the results we’ve gotten to date.\u00a0 But maybe that’s just me.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”\u00a0 I said that years ago, and I see no reason to change my mind now.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the devil you know is indeed better than the one you don’t.\u00a0 If you don’t believe that . . . think back 3 years, then look at ISIS today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stripes today has an article\u00a0 indicating the US Deputy SECSTATE has announced US pledges of another … Throwing Good Money After Bad?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,9,238,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-foreign-policy","category-government-incompetence","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}