The case for arming Syrian rebels

Marko Attila Hoare

 "It is the west's failure militarily to support the Syrian National Coalition and its principal military counterpart, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), that is strengthening the hand of al-Qaida in Syria."
 True.
 "The fixation of Johnson et al on Sunni Islamic extremism is blinding them to the far-greater Islamist menace facing Syria: the Shia Islamist extremism promoted by Iran and embodied in its proxy, Hezbollah."
 Very questionable. I've seen it suggested elsewhere that we should look on Hezbollah's support as political rather than religious, as Shia and Alawites are by no means the same thing. On Libya, I was thinking this morning that if the only significant blowback is one American consulate in Benghazi getting mullered, that's a price worth paying for the Libyan people's freedom from Gadaffi.
 "In the subsequent free elections in Libya, the liberals defeated the Islamists, dramatically disproving the Cassandras' claims that intervention amounted to support for al-Qaida."