President Barack Obama does not understand the complexities involved in successfully conducting a war against the Islamic State, retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer told
Newsmax TV on Monday.
Appearing on "The Hard Line," Shaffer told host Ed Berliner that "President Obama and the White House are fighting the last war. This war is not one where you can take the First Infantry Division and just go take space and hold it. It's much more complex than that.
"Let's remember what we failed to do here is actually support the indigenous people keeping their own land. This is where there is a parallel to World War II. Occupied France — the French wanted to go home. Well, we have the Yazidis, we have the Kurds, we have the Assyrians who all basically want to go back to the very land they have lived in for 1,000 years. What we've made a mistake in doing is picking the wrong people to work as our proxies."
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The Obama administration's support for "moderate radicals" was a recipe for disaster, Shaffer says.
"The whole idea of picking so-called moderate Islamic radicals — now think about that term by itself — as our proxy to go in and destabilize Syria was totally insane. We spent $500 million to train five guys and most of the others, which they didn't want to talk about — that were trained by us, paid for by us — took the training and defected over to al-Qaida. Just not a good return on our investment.
So I think what we've done is some very naĂŻve thinking based on political whim rather than on factual on-the-ground needs to address.
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