Streetwise Professor

Michael Weiss essayed a lame (but I repeat myself) attempt of a rebuttal of the DIA document I wrote about over the weekend: Weiss’s response was apparently sparked by the fact that Sputnik (and not me!) gave the document attention. (It came out in June 2015, not last May as I had thought.)

Weiss’ piece is classic in the annals of farcical reasoning and logical fallacies. His complete failure to address the document and its implications betrays just how damning it is to his cause. If this is the best e’s got . . .

Weiss started out his attempted rebuttal with one of his specialities, an ad hominem attack:

At the time, this document was taken up with similar if paradoxical enthusiasm by far-left anti-imperialists (such as the Guardian’s Seumas Milne, now Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s spin-doctor) and anti-Muslim reactionaries (such as Pamela Gellar) as proof of a nefarious conspiracy led by Washington to encourage a takfiri takeover of the Levant.

None of which has anything to do with the substance of the document.

Weiss then quotes the report:

“If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

He fails to mention that this prediction was made in 2012, and it came to pass, almost exactly. That does speak to its credibility, no?

Weiss scorns the idea that the document was “secret”–putting that word in scare quotes. Well, it was classified as . . . SECRET/NOFORN. I guess that kinda makes it officially secret, eh? He also notes the heavy redactions. So what? Does he have any reason to believe the redactions contradict the opinions that are not redacted–which are not qualified in any way? It is far more likely that the redactions include classified information that supports the conclusions that are expressed in the underrated portions.

Weiss then tries to dismiss the report as just one of many reports turned out by the Washington paper machine:

As The Daily Beast’s Jacob Siegel reported when the document was published, appraisals such as these are too numerous count at the Pentagon, much less be read by senior military or policy planners. And few ever rise to the level of adopted policy prescription.

Nor did this one, as anyone who has watched events unfold in Syria over the last four years can easily determine for himself.

This is an inversion of the importance of the document. The reason that the document is damning is precisely that it was ignored by the administration. The DIA writes a hair on fire warning to the security establishment, and the warning is utterly ignored, with the result being that the dire predictions it made came to pass. Whereas Weiss attempts to claim that the fact that the document was ignored means that it is irrelevant, this is precisely what makes it relevant, and damning to the administration. It either ignored its predictions that were borne out in blood, or it was actually complicit in the Salafist-supporting policy that the document describes.

Weiss then plays a shell game with the chronology:

If the United States had sought to rob Iranian clients and proxies of strategic depth in Syria, then it would plainly not be “de-conflicting” at present with the Syrian and Russian air forces, both of which are providing close air support to those same clients and proxies on the ground.

The document was written in 2012. The “de-conflicting” with Syrian and Russian air forces began in 2015. Much water has passed under the bridge in that time, including Obama’s classic walkback from the “redline” on Assad in 2013, the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 (and the negotiations leading up to it in 2014), the farcical collapse of expensive US efforts to train Syrian rebels, and most importantly the spectacular rise of ISIS in 2014-2015 that the DIA document so presciently predicted. The situation is so different now that current administration policy in no way implies that it was not allying with Salafists in 2011-2012 in an attempt to bring down Assad. At that time, the administration was also crowing about its “success” in Libya, and looked to repeat it in Syria. Now it wants to be completely shed of the situation. Four years of failure will do that.

Weiss finishes with another bait-and-switch:

Moreover, given the president’s well-known reluctance—criticized by his ISIS “co-founder” Hillary Clinton—to substantively aid and arm nationalist Free Syrian Army rebels in 2012 (when the document was drafted), one could argue his policy has been the very opposite of what’s in this document.

The bait-and-switch is that the DIA document doesn’t talk about US support for Weiss’ beloved and allegedly moderate, non-sectarian FSA: it talks about the “supporting powers” favoring Salafists, including AQI, the predecessor of ISIS: the FSA is not mentioned. It is well known that the Gulf states pumped large resources into these groups. Turkey is also clearly implicated (as another leaked report, this one from German intelligence, asserts). The US was clearly aligned with these nations in the objective of “Assad must go”, and indeed, the lukewarm support for the FSA actually supports the DIA’s claim that the “supporting powers” (including the US) had put their money on the Salafists, instead of the FSA.

Further, who knows what covert support the CIA was providing, and to whom? Rumors continue to swirl about a weapons pipeline from Libya to Syrian rebels. I have always have found it more credible that the US mission in Benghazi was attempting to intercept weapons on the loose in Libya to prevent them from flowing to Syria, but I am becoming more open to the possibility that the CIA was indeed running weapons from Libya to Syria. The complete silence about what was going on at the CIA Annex there–a silence in which Republicans on the Intelligence Committee like McCain and Graham and Rubio join in–even in the aftermath of September 11, 2012 makes me suspect that the CIA was doing something much more than a gun buyback program intended to help improve the ‘hood.

I also note that Weiss makes no effort to disprove the assertions in the DIA document that Salafists dominated the Syrian opposition from the beginning. This is important because Weiss made a name for himself by playing war tourist in Aleppo, claiming that he was visiting moderate rebels, and because ever since he has been spinning the tale of a moderate opposition that was abandoned by a feckless US. If the revolution was Salafist from the get go, Weiss comes off as a fool and useful idiot at best, and a collaborator with Islamists at worst. His silence on this point in the DIA document speaks volumes.

In short, Michael Weiss makes a great case for the importance of the DIA document by failing so miserably in his lame attempt to make a case against it.