WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Michael Hughes — US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s plan to increase military support to the Syrian opposition in an effort to oust President Bashar Assad will only fuel extremist forces and threaten global security, US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher told Sputnik.
"This has been a fiasco, an Obama-Clinton fiasco in terms of helping groups against Assad who in the end will be actually strengthening the forces of radical Islamic terrorism that threaten all of us," Rohrabacher said.
Rohrabacher maintained that Clinton would "double down" on Obama’s failed strategy in Syria where the United States has spent a considerable amount of time and money on transferring arms and training factions that no Western government would want to claim as a partner.
"We already have been giving weapons to anti-government rebels in Syria and it has turned into a disaster," the congressman from California suggested.
Syria’s government under Assad has been relatively stable and has refrained from instigating violence against its neighbors, he claimed.
"Hillary wants us to treat the Assad regime in Syria as if it was an enemy regime to the United States and a major cause of the instability and chaos and conflict in the Middle East, which just turns reality on its head," Rohrabacher added.
In September, a US-Russian brokered ceasefire in Syria collapsed after repeated violations which forced Damascus to resume a military campaign in Aleppo. The US Department of State suspended bilateral engagement with Moscow, although both sides have been participating in multilateral talks in Geneva aimed at reaching a renewed cessation of hostilities.
Moscow has argued that Washington failed to meet obligations stipulated in the ceasefire agreements to separate opposition fighters from terrorist groups such as al-Nusra Front, while the United States has alleged that Russia and Syria have targeted civilians and so-called moderate rebel forces.
