We were never at war with so-called jihadists, we were always at war with Eastasia. Don’t be alarmed by the fact that your government is giving arms to so-called jihadists:
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.
That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives, casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.
“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.
This really makes you wonder what the United States’s interest in toppling the Syrian regime is. What is it about the Syrian regime that makes them so increadibly dangerous that America is willing to arm the same groups that it claims are a threat to the American people? Is the Syrian regime more brutal than the theocratic regimes that have been filling power vacuums left in the Middle East as of late? As it currently stands the Syrian constitution requires the president to be Muslim but doesn’t establish Islam as the state’s religion. In fact it has the following to say:
Citizens are equal in rights and duties, without discrimination on grounds of sex, race, language,religion or creed.
Would the situation in Syria improve if a more theocratic regime gained power? Historically such a thing is extremely rare. In general more theocratic states end up being more tyrannical and use whatever religion they claim to believe in as justification for solidifying their power. I would argue that it’s unlikely that America is arming so-called jihadists for the benefit of the Syrian people. On the other hand Syria is on the border of Iran and would make a great launching point for any war against Iran. That’s something to consider.