The Illusion of Control
What do Syria and Operation Fast and Furious have in common? Loose cannons. The New York Times says the weapons flowing to Syria are going to men who are likely to turn them on Americans. “WASHINGTON — Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.”
“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.
According to the NYT this “calls into question the Syria strategy laid out by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger.” Romney wanted to make sure weapons flowed into the hands of those “who share our values”. He’s not even President, but it’s always Romney’s fault.
But Mr. Romney stopped short of saying that he would have the United States provide those arms directly, and his aides said he would instead rely on Arab allies to do it. That would leave him, like Mr. Obama, with little direct control over the distribution of the arms.
Marc Thiessen, writing in the Washington Post says the flow of weapons into Jihadi hands essentially means that Joe Biden was less than candid when he confidently told Paul Ryan “we are in the process now — and have been for months — in making sure that help, humanitarian aid, as well as other aid and training is getting to those forces that we believe, the Turks believe, the Jordanians believe, the Saudis believe are the free forces inside of Syria. That is underway.”
In actuality they were in the process of shipping — and had been for months — a large quantity of weapons To Whom It May Concern.
According to the NYT nobody believes any controlled distribution is taking place and are trying to understand “why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition through the shadowy pipeline with roots in Qatar, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia.” Maybe because they’re being shipped through Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Those problems were central concerns for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, when he traveled secretly to Turkey last month, officials said. ….
One Middle Eastern diplomat who has dealt extensively with the C.I.A. on the issue said that Mr. Petraeus’s goal was to oversee the process of “vetting, and then shaping, an opposition that the U.S. thinks it can work with.” According to American and Arab officials, the C.I.A. has sent officers to Turkey to help direct the aid, but the agency has been hampered by a lack of good intelligence about many rebel figures and factions.
These developments put the recent assault on the American consulate in Benghazi in a new light. If fhe eyes of American intelligence are being put out even as the outflow of money to “freedom fighters” continues — where are the weapons going to? The tentative answer appears to be: to groups like al-Qaeda.
Thiessen says it doesn’t appear to bother Joe Biden.
If this is the assessment of our intelligence community, why did Biden say the exact opposite in the debate last week? When Biden was asked during the debate why requests for additional security in Libya were denied, he pleaded ignorance and blamed the State Department, declaring: “We weren’t told they wanted more security there.” But in the case of Syria, the Times reports, the President and his national security team were told that the aid was going to “hard-line Islamic jihadists.” Yet Biden plainly asserted aid was going to “people who deserve the help” and “free forces inside Syria” and not jihadists. It is simply implausible that, if President Obama and his top national security advisers were aware of the intelligence assessments, Biden was not.
Why is it implausible? This is an administration that can ship thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels and be unaware of it. So why can’t it ship weapons to jihadists and be unaware of it? The modus operandi has been to find a fall guy for every debacle. For Fast and Furious it was some low level bureaucrats. For Benghazi it will be Hillary. For Syria the talent search is still on.
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It seems to be not a bug, but a feature. And had been for a loong time. Unfortunately present admin. is not unique in this regard and the next one will possibly be similar. The question I do have for a few decades now and still cannot come up with an adequate answer is: WHY? What is the goal?
Throwing weapons at a civil war is kind of like throwing money at a “green” energy program, only with consequences worse than merely squandering tax payer dollars.
This president has absolutely no understanding about cause and effect. But he is smart enough to know that things are going horribly wrong. Since he can’t figure out why everything he touches turns to crapola, he has implemented a new paradigm: Cause, effect and….Woooops! Denial and spin.
And then, behind closed doors, he says to Axelrod: “Gee, I hope we don’t kill too many innocents this time. But hey, if you’re gonna make an omlette….”
“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” –the fictional Sherlock Holmes
So what is impossible? That Obama is incompetent? If that is not the case then what may we infer that the actual truth is?
Suspiciously quite from the Republican side of the aisle… This too speaks loudly! 0bama has gotten away with so much because the Republican side has been mainly absent, the MSM won’t be able to ignore or outright cover it up if Republicans were demanding and shouting about it! Our Congress is as much of the Problem as the current President is!
Governor Romney should not have called for ending federal funding for public television despite how much he likes Big Bird. Governor Romney should have called for ending federal funding for public television because of how much he dislikes Barney. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting or the Public Broadcasting Service should not be equated with Big Bird, who is likable and stupid, but rather Barney, a stupid purple dinosaur who has progressively “Barnified” our political system for the past twenty years.
The political legitimacy of the Obama administration depends upon maintaining an illusion of acting like the infamous purple dinosaur. Even while our diplomats are getting massacred, our military is getting placed into a trap in Afghanistan, our war effort is getting outsourced to robot assassins, and our arms are getting sent to al-Qaeda affiliates, our president must at least go through the motions of singing, “I Love You, You Love Me, We’re a Happy Family…”
Of course, reality is harsher – much harsher – than the saccharine universe of Barney. However, to admit such a thing in public would undermine the support that President Obama still has.
President Obama got elected as a man who would “bring people together”. The problem with that promise is that he effectively claimed credit for any Republican gestures of statesmanship in advance, thus creating absolutely no incentive for his opposition to cooperate. It is a basic rule of statesmanship to allow other people to take credit; so long as one takes credit in advance for any future compromises, there is no reason for opponents to compromise. It was almost as if President Obama relishes demonizing domestic opponents more than accomplishing anything real.
6. Alexis
Governor Romney should not have called for ending federal funding for public television despite how much he likes Big Bird. Governor Romney should have called for ending federal funding for public television because of how much he dislikes Barney. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting or the Public Broadcasting Service should not be equated with Big Bird, who is likable and stupid, but rather Barney, a stupid purple dinosaur who has progressively “Barnified” our political system for the past twenty years.
After being remorselessly subjected to Barney for his young son, my son declared “Barney is Satan”
Obama simply confuses ‘another brick in the wall’ with ‘another bump in the road’.
It’s too bad that our ally, Israel, cannot be the conduit of arms to our friends in Syria. Why rely on Israel when when we have Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan?
“trying to understand “why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition through the shadowy pipeline with roots in Qatar, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia.” Maybe because they’re being shipped through Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”
No, it’s because there are very few ‘moderate’ Muslims in the region and none interested in challenging the hard-line Islamists. When hard-line Islamists say, “you’re either with us or against us” they mean it and insist that others demonstrate their acquiescence by, at the least, condoning jihadist behavior by not interfering, in any way, with Islamist goals.
tRex…
Barney has ONE socialization function: to mainstream dolts.
Not withstanding its tedious stupidity — Barney is positioned as a ‘socially included’ doufus — with the implication that stupidity is normal.
Beyond that, Barney — just by his size — is an indictment of large, older people generally.
How oft it’s said, “He’s a dinosaur.” in reference to a senior citizen/ grandparent?
“Obama simply confuses ‘another brick in the wall’ with ‘another bump in the road’.” MSO
While many things are possible, sometimes, what might be explained as simple stupidity is in fact malicious intent.
Many have pointed out that if Obama wanted to hamstring America he could hardly have done a better job than his ‘incompetent’ 4 years have yielded.
But is it incompetence?
Consider the latest circumstantial piece of evidence that the depth of Obama’s duplicity has yet to be determined; Obama’s ring: ‘There is no god but Allah’
“Occam’s razor (also written as Ockham’s razor, Latin lex parsimoniae) is the law of parsimony, economy, or succinctness. It is a principle stating that among competing hypotheses, the one which makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.”
In regards to the “hopey-changy” administration, that leads us to where?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Re # 10. blert
“…the implication that stupidity is normal….”
Stupidity IS normal. After all the IQ distribution is normalized to IQ=100 as a mean.
#5 CharlesWhite
The majority of elected Republicans are what I call Institutional Republicans. They really are more collaborators with the Democrats than opponents to them. They themselves are Stockholm Syndrome-d into supporting them rather than the growing TEA Party/Patriot Movement. They are largely disconnected with the base of the Republican Party and the mass of the citizens. After all, you don’t meet them at the “right” cocktail parties; and you do not become a multimillionaire in one term at $174K a year if you do not go along with the corruption.
Because the current TWANLOC regime is so much worse than their collaborators, we have to stand with the Institutionals, while trying to get as many TEA Party/Patriots in office as possible. Romney is not the first, second, or third choice for many on our side, but he is better than the open enemies of the Constitution in power.
This is, likely, the last chance to turn things around electorally. And even that chance is based on elections actually happening and votes being counted honestly. Those two events each have a probability of < 1, with the concomitant combined probability being far less. Each item becomes less probable, the more desperate the Left becomes as November 6 approaches.
IF we get enough Patriots into Congress, IF we get a majority in the Senate [with allowance for the inevitable DIABLO's], and IF Romney displaces "Teh Won" [Bees P Upon Him]; then we have a chance to slow the bleeding and push back. But unless Romney surprises the be-jabbers out of me, he will not go beyond a certain point so as to not offend the enemy. And the Institutionals in Congress will not go too far if it means ending the gravy train. They will instead collaborate with the Democrats. It is inevitable.
Best case, it is going to be a long fight. There are terrible hard times ahead for the country, even if we get all the breaks above. And the Patriot Movement is going to have to break from the Institutionals, hopefully in time for an election in 2014. If we can crush the Democrats in a wave election now, that break will be easier and more productive.
If electoral means fail, or are denied … "Only the Great Blue Sky Tengri Nor knows what the outcome will be.”.
Subotai Bahadur
Obama has the illusion of control, but the CIA has control of illusions. They make friendly officers look like drug cartels or even al-Qaeda… innocent telecoms look like spy-hacking operation when Google is secretly responsible. What’s worse?
In regards to the “hopey-changy” administration, that leads us to where?
It leads us to corruption. As soon as I heard Obama say he was going to use “grand bargains” to solve the problems of the Middle East I understood this to mean he was going to pay people off. I also began to suspect that the payments would not all be in one direction.
The money is no longer in defense contracting. It’s in the hiring of militias. It’s in contracts with fly-by-night security agencies that hire locals but give them no guns. It’s in buying weapons on the arms market and distributing it to “freedom fighters”. It’s in buying back these same guns after you’ve spread them around. It’s in paying off the Muslim Brotherhood, the Turks and doing deals with the Saudis.
But instead of local cronies like Solyndra soaking up the taxpayer money you have international cronies who are handling the outsourcing. And in exchange they contribute. Just like the guys who provide the Obamaphones, or the batteries or all the “free” stuff that this administration provides. How did they put it? “You’ve got to give a little back. It’s always better when you share the wealth.”
This is “smart diplomacy”, although you could call it something else.
Yeah sure, maybe some Islam is involved. But that’s just the icing on the cake. In reality it is a giant ripoff, a snake pit of double-dealing among the players. Accidents happen and Benghazi was an accident. Four more years.
I’m still trying to square the circle on the apparent widespread belief that “moderate” and “pro-western” “liberal” folk could be inspired to risk their lives, families, and sacred honor against motivated extremists…Especially by the likes of our backside leadership.
What fire-in-the-belly can a [western] society that is busily slouching toward Gomorrah and centralized penury possibly offer the poor and oppressed – a society which also happens to wholly own a proven track record of periodically throwing allies under buses at the drop of a politically expedient hat and the whim of a fickle and habitually uninterested electorate?
Our primary foreign policy problem is that the promise of a homogenous godless Lady Gaga porn ‘culture’ and long march toward government dependence/enslavement isto unlikely inspire anything more noble or martial than armed opposition to the aforementioned decadence…And I say this as someone who is on our side.
By “our side” I mean the Western world which used to be synonymous with Liberty, independence, and upward social mobility,ic but this creed worth fighting for has been fundamentally transformed into un-inspirational socialist mush. People still flee here en mass on the fading memory of what the west once stood for and/or the promise of redistributed yankee cash for doing jobs we can’t be bothered to do ourselves anymore.
Sadly, the inspirational void left by our departure from our roots is being filled by the enemies of all that western society -and America in particular- once stood for.
#16. wretchard
That has always been the problem with the “one worlders.” In reality they simply have no loyalty to the people who have elected them to represent their interests. None, unless failing to do so means the end of their power, and that is something they cannot abide. The lesson to be learned? So long as governmental positions are inherently limited sociopaths won’t try to occupy them, something the founders of the US Constitution knew but that we have forgotten.
Perhaps I am totally wrong (it wouldn’t be the first time) but it seems to me that the more powerful a position is the more strongly it tends to attract people who have sociopathic tendencies who want to attain it.
But I’m just a mere common fool. I’ve never been invited to one single cocktail party given by the high and mighty. That, to the High and Mighty, tells you everything you need to know about me and how insignificant I am in a nutshell.
W #16: “The money is no longer in defense contracting. It’s in the hiring of militias. It’s in contracts with fly-by-night security agencies that hire locals but give them no guns. ”
Looks like he’s trying to run the MENA just like the Chicago Wards. Only using islamists instead of union thugs. Although the similarities are there, they are in fact different species and have different outlooks on life.
Good luck with that.
I’ll call dibs on having predicted a repeat of F&F in the Mid-East. From “Changing the Narrative” comment #22.
True that some Americans got killed chasing weapons we tossed into Libya and the current scandal of the week is the shipping of weapons to Syria but throw me a bone and work with me here. It gets hard to keep up. Which may be considered a political spin strategy by the Brain Trust behind this.
Remember the Cabinet meeting in “Duck Soup” where Groucho first refuses to discuss the budget because it is New Business and then refuses to discuss the budget because it has become Old Business? The MSM Donk operatives are capable of saying that Benghazi is now an old story, because other disasters they are busy not covering have ensued.
#14—
” Romney is not the first, second, or third choice for many on our side, but he is better than the open enemies of the Constitution in power.”
Absolutely; you take what you can get if it’s in the direction you want, then keep pushing for another inch, then another …. Romney’s better than Obama, even if he’s not Gingrich or whomever. Next, somebody a little more conservative than Romney, and so forth—ratcheting, creeping along. Ditto Congress, ditto the courts—always pressing, never letting up.
One thing that’s always bothered me: conservatives tend to go for the big hit, clear over the fence (eg, the Contract With America). The thing I’ve always noted about the Libs is they settle for what they can get. Can’t get 100%, take 25%, even 5%. Can’t increase spending XXXX billion? Then settle for XX billion and call it a ”spending cut”. But always pushing, poking, settling for some increment of what they want.
The problem with O-Care is they crammed it all through and aroused the public; if they’d been patient they would have had it sooner or later … and maybe still will.
But instead of local cronies like Solyndra soaking up the taxpayer money you have international cronies who are handling the outsourcing. And in exchange they contribute. Just like the guys who provide the Obamaphones, or the batteries or all the “free” stuff that this administration provides. How did they put it? “You’ve got to give a little back. It’s always better when you share the wealth.”
And hence the huge month of small non-verified credit card donations to OFA? I wonder what said cronies are expected to pay back that way?
Roger Hedgecock was suggesting that the Obama/Biden meme, “Osama is dead, GM is alive”, drove the administration to squelch the AQ connections to the Benghazi attack. He further opines that Biden is being favored for 2016 and therefore, Hill is being tossed under the bus.
On a secondary topic, I was catching up with some Radio Derb listening from 10-5 and Darbyshire uses a fairly longish quote from Whiskey regarding why the Saylor hypothosis would not work for the Romney campaign. Anywhoo….
#13—
” Stupidity IS normal. After all the IQ distribution is normalized to IQ=100 as a mean.”
Beg to differ. One hundred is normal, a regular ”average” person, statistically speaking. Around 85, one standard deviation below the mean of 100, would be something like ”dull”, possibly seem stupid to many people. Below that is stupid probably to anybody and at about 70 (minus 2 SD) would be minimally educable.
Well, gee, that’s why you get in there and actively participate. So you can control what is going on, and if necessary, terminate contracts and also have the option to do so with extreme prejudice.
It is an unfortunate fact that if you don’t do something yourself you ain’t ever gonna be good at it. And that includes managing it. The commercialization, outsourcing, and plausible deniability people never realize that – because they ain’t good at what they discount as unimportant.
Do you think anyone thought of secreting some GPS transponders in those arms? Now we used to do that kind of thing in Vietnam: hand a contact you meet in some bar in Thailand a nice portable radio as a friendship gift, not mentioning to him that some extra features have been included. But they did not do it for Fast and Furious and very likely did not do it for the Syrian arms.
Obama and his admin are well aware that they’re providing weapons to our enemies;they’re operating under the reality of
“The Taliban is inside the Building”!
The enemy has infiltraded our government/white house and, is not limited to Huma Abedin belonging to the muslim brotherhood.