An astonishing national priority.

As always, I have to ask When did the American people demand such actions on the part of our "leaders" and what could $1 billion a year have paid for in America itself?

I don't know what it is about foreigners that fascinates American foreign policy "elites" but whatever it is we sure as heck heart foreigners in the worst way. Not Syrians, of course. We exist to kill them, destroy their country, and steal their oil, all the while that we play le grande homme.

Anyway, check this out:

Obama's upgraded proxy war in Syria proved to be "one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A.," the New York Times reported in 2017. Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed a budget of nearly $1 billion per year, or around $1 of every $15 in CIA spending. The CIA armed and trained nearly 10,000 insurgents, spending "roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program," U.S. officials told the Washington Post in 2015. Two years later, one U.S. official estimated that CIA-funded militias "may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years."^[1]

In this case, as with Iran, everything you want to know about our policy toward Syria floats up the Potomac from an Israel submarine marked "Special Delivery" for "Current occupant 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

Notes
^[1] "'Al Qaeda is on our side': How Obama-Biden team empowered terrorists in Syria." By Aaron Maté, Substack, 4/20/22.