Cato..

Americans should be shocked by what Washington does such as illegally intervening in Syria’s civil war and occupying a third of that country. 

Despite pressure to actively intervene against Assad, the Obama administration focused on aiding supposedly moderate insurgents, with little success. One program spent a half billion dollars to train fewer than threescore fighters.

 Radicals hid their views in order to receive arms from America; supposedly democratic forces fought with and sometimes surrendered to Islamists, along with their equipment.

Moreover, reported the New York Times: “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al‐​Assad are going to hard‐​line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.”

One of the indirect beneficiaries of U.S. aid was Jabhat al‐​Nusra, Syria’s al‐​Qaeda affiliate.  [Article by Cato Institute.]