Over the past several months, we’ve attempted to explain why Washington’s strategy to arm anti-Assad elements in Syria is even more absurd now than it was initially.
At this point, anyone who follows the conflict is well aware that ISIS and al-Nusra have powerful, wealthy benefactors in Ankara, Riyadh, and Doha and the US hasn’t always been too keen on cutting off the flow of weapons and money to Sunni extremists battling the SAA. In other words: the US and its regional allies are largely responsible for the rise of the very same terrorists they claim to be fighting.
As ridiculous as that most certainly is, the “unintended” consequences of supplying weapons to the mishmash of rebels and militants fighting for control of Syria took a further turn for the absurd last month when the FSA’s First Coastal Division used a US-supplied TOW [5] to destroy a Russian helicopter conducting a search and rescue operation following the downing of an Su-24 near the Syrian border. That rather brazen act effectively proved that the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are but one degree of separation away from open warfare with the Russians. Additionally, it woke the world up to what’s been going on around Aleppo for months. The FSA has been using TOWs supplied by the US and its allies to shoot at the SAA, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Iraq-based Shiite militias who were called to the fight by Tehran. Here’s the point: the Shiite militiamen who are on the receiving end of those TOW attacks are the very same soldiers that are assisting the US-trained Iraqi regulars in the fight against ISIS in Iraq. In short: they are enemies on one side of the border, but tolerated on the other side where they function as the most effective force battling ISIS (of course the militias recently threatened to kill any US troops who come to Iraq, but that's another story).
If that’s not ridiculous enough for you, consider also that al-Nusra recently released a video [6] thanking the FSA for sharing their TOWs, which means, once again, that the US is knowingly arming terrorists.
Well, for those readers who have enjoyed our coverage of the TOW story, we bring you the following clip which appears to depict Syrian rebels firing a missile at a Hezbollah fighter (note the yellow flag near the vehicle) sitting in a truck. In a remarkable example of remaining cool under fire (literally), the soldier simply pulls forward, dodging death by a few feet at the last second.
