http://www.nationalreview.com/node/424226/print Syria: Just One of Obama’s Foreign-Policy Failures
By Jonah Goldberg — September 18, 2015
The news that the Obama administration has spent $500 million to put “four or five” fighters on the ground in Syria adds an almost comic irony to what is ultimately a tragic farce.
In the 1980s, the symbol of Republican incompetence and mismanagement was the $600 toilet seat. Left out of the media coverage was the fact that the toilet seat was for a special kind of anti-submarine aircraft that had been out of production and needed special retrofitting. But forget all that. How does that compare to spending $100 million per non-bionic human soldier?
This news comes from General Lloyd J. Austin III, head of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. Ever the loyal soldier, Austin insists that we should stay the course. It’s not really a tenth of a billion dollars for each rebel, we’ve got another hundred “in the pipeline,” he told Congress Wednesday. No doubt that will turn the tide.
Besides, he says, the larger strategy in Syria is working. Specifically, he offered this word salad: “Despite some slow movement at the tactical level, we continue to make progress across the battlespace in support of the broader U.S. government strategy to degrade and ultimately defeat [the Islamic State].”
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