Moderate vs. extremist rebels of Syria, and what they mean to US

As ISIL advances “by leaps and bounds” in the Middle East, the US failure to train enough “moderate rebels” to allegedly confront them is no big surprise as Washington itself has been engaged in creating the “extremist” ones, says a former US Congressional staffer.

“The United States is engaged in a rather schizophrenic policy with regard to Syria and Iraq,” Rodney Martin told Press TV in a Monday interview that followed Pentagon officials’ private acknowledgement that the US training program has failed.

Pentagon officials told The Associated Press last week that the US military was training fewer than 100 so-called moderate militants in Syria to fight the ISIL Takfiris, highlighting a troubled training program that has failed to reach its target of producing 5,400 militants a year.

“This is all farcical for the United States to say that they are going to train and equip moderates,” and then claim are falling short of a program to train them, Martin said, arguing, “because they created the extremists” in the first place.

The US is busy creating “bogeymen” in the region such as ISIL, Taliban, and al-Qaeda “when it’s not engaged in direct military involvement,” said the Congressional staffer,

The ISIL terrorist group surfaced in Syria after Washington “desired to implement regime change” in the country.

Initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012, the Takfiri militants have been carrying out horrific acts of violence, including public decapitations and crucifixions in areas under their control in Iraq, Syria and more recently Libya.

Martin further suggested that the only solution for the West get rid of ISIL is to “support the real governments that have shown a success in fighting extremism” in the region, namely the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran.