Barry Rubin: Fast and Furious, Middle East Style: Why Should Obama Help Bring America's Second-Worst Enemies to Power?

Fast and Furious, Middle East Style: Why Should Obama Help Bring America's Second-Worst Enemies to Power?

by Barry Rubin

Here’s still another of a series of self-serving leaks from the Obama Administration. In this case, however, different from the half-dozen previous examples, it reveals something very important about policy. Call it, “Fast and Furious, Middle East Style.”

In the Fast and Furious operation, the U.S. government funneled weapons to Mexican drug gangs. Now it is funneling weapons, at least indiscriminately, to anti-American, antisemitic, radical forces in Syria. That is, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

Suppose that there was one Mexican drug gang that was a bit more brutal. Would Fast and Furious then have been a great idea because it left that one out of the weapons’ distribution?
No.

Yet that is precisely what is happening in Syria. Read closely the New York Times article on this matter because it reflects the precise information leaked by “American officials and Arab intelligence officers.”

Continue reading Fast and Furious, Middle East Style: Why Should Obama Help Bring America's Second-Worst Enemies to Power?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, was published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and  Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media 

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