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As he and his officials watch the hideous video clips of entire families being slaughtered the irony of his own legacy in Syria and Iraq will not be lost on him and many will say the real cause of blowback here is inconsistent U.S. foreign policy in the region. The very ISIS fighters that Trump was killing with U.S. troops in January of 2017 when he took office, are the same people who are now running Syria and are apparently allies.
Of course, many will hastily point to the Biden administration and wave the finger at the eleventh hour decision for the HTS group to be given the cash to advance on Damascus and overthrow Assad. Was it a decision taken entirely by Netanyahu or did he consult Biden? Did Trump know anything about it at all?
What is clearer is that America's history of backing terror groups comes with a heavy cost as there is no mistake now that the HTS cannot 'reform' into the required vision of a 'moderate' Islamic government which the West can do business with.
In the early 90s George H. W. Bush invited Taliban officials to come and visit the U.S. as part of a way of getting to know them, so that they would sign off on a massive gas pipeline deal stretching the entire width of the country and bringing trillions of dollars to the Californian energy group behind it. They turned up, of course, in their traditional attire and drank tea and mooched with Bush and his cabal. The deal was never signed as they would not budge on their extortionate demand of a 100m dollars per year just to protect the pipeline, once built. At that time, the Taliban were stoning to death women and carrying out the most barbaric practices. None of this seemed to have any bearing on the deal or whether a U.S. administration could get along with them or not.
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