Obama-Created Terrorist Army Attacking Obama-Created Proxy Army

Oct. 21, 2019 (EIRNS)—The one element that the Trump Administration and the Putin government of Russia don’t yet have a handle on, is the so-called Syrian National Army, the proxy army of Syrian jihadists backed by the Turkish government. This element has been implicated in numerous war crimes, including the murder of a Kurdish politician and two others who were traveling with her, since the Turkish army began its incursion into northern Syria on Oct. 9.

These are the same jihadists who were labeled “moderate rebels” by the Obama team that created this “army,” writes Max Blumenthal in Grayzone. These crimes were committed by what began life as the Free Syrian Army, created by the Obama Administration beginning in 2012 as a weapon against the Assad government in Damascus, an operation which was likely supported by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and in which then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had more than a hand. After President Donald Trump canceled the CIA and Pentagon programs to arm the FSA, its various jihadi factions were given over to the Muslim Brotherhood government of Turkey and united into the Syrian National Army.

Then, as early as 2015, the Obama Administration began arming Kurdish militias for the campaign against ISIS and created the construct now known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Democrats are now blaming President Trump for crimes being committed by one Obama-created proxy army against another Obama-created proxy army.

Blumenthal cites a SETA (Turkish think tank) paper which reports that 21 of the 28 groups that now make up the Syrian National Army

“were previously supported by the United States, three of them via the Pentagon’s program to combat DAESH [ISIS]. Eighteen of these factions were supplied by the CIA via the MOM Operations Room in Turkey, a joint intelligence operation room of the ‘Friends of Syria’ to support the armed opposition. Fourteen factions of the 28 were also recipients of the U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank guided missiles.”

“In other words,” he writes,

“virtually the entire apparatus of anti-Assad insurgents armed and equipped under the Obama Administration has been repurposed by the Turkish military to serve as the spearhead of its brutal invasion of northern Syria. The leader of this force is Salim Idriss, now the ‘Defense Minister’ of Syria’s Turkish-backed ‘interim government.’ He’s the same figure who hosted John McCain when the late senator made his infamous 2013 incursion into Syria.”