Obama Was Against Syrian Rebels Before He Was For Them

 

IBDEditorials.com

Mideast: Despite reports that half the Syrian "rebels" are al-Qaida terrorists and other jihadists, the White House insists they're mostly freedom fighters worthy of aid. That's not what the commander in chief said last year.

According to Jane's, a defense consultancy, more than 45,000 of the estimated 100,000 opposition fighters are tied to al-Qaida and other hardline Islamist groups. Other reports say Syria is the biggest jihad since the jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Jihadists are flooding in from Iraq, Europe and even Canada. This week an ex-Gitmo prisoner who once trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan turned up dead in Syria's bloody civil war.

Last September, during the U.S. presidential campaign, Obama agreed the rebels were in fact al-Qaida-linked terrorist "elements" that could threaten us. He recommended we not only oppose them but fight them.

"We've decimated al-Qaida's top leadership in the border regions around Pakistan," he said in a University of Miami speech. "But in Yemen, in Libya, in other of these places — increasingly in places like Syria — what you see is these elements that don't have the capacity that a bin Laden or core al-Qaida had, but can still cause a lot of damage.

"And we've got to make sure that we remain vigilant and are focused on preventing them from doing us any harm."

So why are we helping those who can do us harm?

Obama's spokesman last week said military aid would begin flowing to the Syrian rebels through the CIA and other U.S. channels. "It is important to note that both the political and the military opposition are, and will be, receiving this assistance," said Jay Carney.

The White House promises it's sending arms only to "moderate" factions in Syria, not jihadists associated with terrorist groups like al-Qaida. Really? Then why did the president find it necessary this week to unilaterally waive the federal law banning the supply of lethal aid to terrorist groups?

That's right, Obama suspended a provision of federal law designed to prevent the arming of terrorists in order to clear the way for arming Syrian "rebels" who he knows full well are not "secular" or "freedom-loving."

These so-called opposition groups receiving the bulk of lethal aid are precisely those we don't want to have any aid. Obama is merely sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the U.S.