Real life does not offer many black and white, easy/obvious decisions.
I'm surprised there's such a bunch of radical Muslim coddlers on here. What is this, International Hug a Terrorist day?
I'm totally in favor of arming the Syrian rebel groups because that's a VASTLY better option than NOT arming them and standing by with our thumbs up our buttskies. So you guys want to just sit on the sidelines like some pinko cowards while radical Islamfacistists turn a big swath of the middle east into the Disney World of terrorist training camps?
So just wondering, who do you guys thing the target is going to be when these terrorist rabid Islamafacists train up 10,000 martyrs? You think they're going to attack Norway?
Yeah, yeah, you never know where the weapons could end up. Afghanistan, mujahadeen, etc. What you guys are forgetting about that whole little story is that the whole program was a wild success. By arming the Afghan rebels, the Soviet Union was so burned so badly that it completely iced their plans to annex VASTLY more territory. Had the Soviets gone on with their empire expansion, a US / USSR confrontation would have been inevitable and far, far more Americans would have been killed had that happened.
That's the problem with history, you cannot know what did NOT happen because of other actions. The other problem with history is that doing nothing often is viewed as a safe choice at the time, when it often proves to be the worst possible action.
Grouse