{"id":165106,"date":"2015-07-10T21:19:24","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T21:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/risking-a-jihadi-victory-in-syria\/"},"modified":"2015-07-10T21:19:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T21:19:24","slug":"risking-a-jihadi-victory-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/risking-a-jihadi-victory-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Risking a Jihadi Victory in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"253.91007375126\">\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> President Obama\u2019s \u201cregime change\u201d policy in Syria has rested on a hopeful fantasy about the existence of a \u201cmoderate\u201d rebel force and a willful blindness toward the jihadists who actually stand to gain power \u2014 a dangerous mix of make-believe and denial \u2014 as Ted Snider explains.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-15455\"\/>By Ted Snider<\/p>\n<p>Attempts at \u201cregime change\u201d always involve three parties: the foreign government that desires to carry out the regime change, the regime that is targeted for changing, and the domestic group meant to replace the current regime or at least facilitate the coup. But regime change is a complex and messy business with the history of attempted American coups littered with disasters that resulted from a favored third party that was as nefarious than the regime it replaced \u2014 if not more so.<\/p>\n<p>In that way, America\u2019s initial reaction to the attempts by the Islamic State to topple the regimes in Iraq and Syria was bizarre and unexpected. As first \u201cAl-Qaeda in Iraq\u201d and then as \u201cthe Islamic State of Iraq and Syria\u201d (or ISIS), the Islamic State was the very kind of force that the \u201cwar on terror\u201d was supposed to eliminate from the region. However, initially as ISIS cut its own state out of the Levant (and especially Syria), America was largely silent.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>ISIS: the State of Terror<\/em>, terrorism experts Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger say \u201cthe Obama administration gave the problem short shrift\u201d and \u201cdismissed concerns about [ISIS] and other jihadists fighting in . . . Syria.\u201d The authors cite a 2014 interview in which President Barack Obama compared ISIS to a junior varsity team masquerading as major league. His administration seemed not to be noticing the ISIS threat and appeared \u201ccaught off guard\u201d by its success and viciousness.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_12720\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"32\"><a href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/james-foley-isis.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12720\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif?55ac53\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/james-foley-isis-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative.\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12720\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/james-foley-isis-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative.\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Such a failure of intelligence would be bizarre enough. But it was not an intelligence failure; it was\u00a0policy. What was truly strange was not that the Obama administration\u00a0hadn\u2019t noticed but that it had. U.S.\u00a0intelligence had informed the policymakers about ISIS, and the policymakers chose silence.<\/p>\n<p>So, why would the Obama&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/07\/10\/risking-a-jihadi-victory-in-syria\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: President Obama\u2019s \u201cregime change\u201d policy in Syria has rested on a hopeful fantasy about the existence of a \u201cmoderate\u201d rebel force and a willful blindness toward the jihadists who actually stand to gain power \u2014 a dangerous mix of make-believe and denial \u2014 as Ted Snider explains. By Ted Snider Attempts at \u201cregime change\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-165106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}