U.S. to Use Psych Tests to Vett Syrian Rebels for Moderateness

Many have compared those "moderate Syrian rebels" the U.S. keeps looking for to unicorns. The U.S. now thinks it has a new set of tools to scare the unicorns out of hiding, and to tell the nasty terrorists from the good terrorists: psychological evaluations, biometric checks and stress tests.
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Many have compared those "moderate Syrian rebels" the U.S. keeps looking for to unicorns. The U.S. now thinks it has a new set of tools to scare the unicorns out of hiding, and to tell the nasty terrorists from the good terrorists: psychological evaluations, biometric checks and stress tests. There are problems, and it is unlikely this will work well.

Call of Duty: Problems One-Four

According to the Washington Post, "moderate" Syrian fighters will be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Successful participants "would gradually attain access to higher levels of training and weaponry." So basically this is going to work something like Call of Duty leveling-up. Too much X-Box at the Pentagon. Problem One.

The Post goes on to say that the American government hopes "to lessen the risk that U.S.-trained fighters sent back into Syria to combat ISIS will use their weapons on civilians or -- like the Afghan mujahideen fighters Washington backed in the 1980s -- later turn against the United States and its allies." This is of course a good goal, considering those U.S.-backed '80s-era mujahideen fighters went on to become al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS. Problem Two.

The psych screening and stress testing will not stand alone. Biometric data will be gathered from the recruits, and along with their names, run through all sorts of databases. Needless to say, a person must exist in one of those databases for the checking to do any good. And in a region of the world where last names and birthdays are not always recorded, there may be some problems with that. There are a lot of "Muhummed, FNU, 01/01/01" entries in the databases that match everyone and no one (FNU = Full Name Unknown). Problem Three.

"In the special operations community, we have a pretty long history of vetting and screening surrogate forces that we've worked with," said an official at CENTCOM who apparently is unfamiliar with the results of the 1980s mujahideen fighters experiment, America's near-endless work with human rights violating Central and South American thug armies (see School of the Americas) and so forth. That official appears also unaware of the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan in the present war by their Afghan partners, so called "Green-on-Blue" attacks. Problem Four.

Problem Five: No Leahy Vetting

For all the hail-mary style "vetting" that will sort-of take place, one thing which will not happen is Leahy Vetting.

Leahy Vetting is a process, albeit flawed as it is run by a small office located deep inside the State Department, put in place during the 1990s precisely to stop the U.S. from funding and partnering with human rights violators who might fulfill America's short term goals but ultimately alienate the very populations the U.S. seeks to win over.

But because the Syrian rebels will not be part of a state-sponsored force, the Leahy Vetting laws will not apply, according to an interpretation announced by the Obama Administration (existing Department of Defense regulations classify "paramilitary forces" as included, so we'll call that Problem 5.5). That means even the very light touch of Leahy won't be applied to America's new partners in the fight against ISIS. Persons who at this point may be concerned that the U.S. will be backing one group of human rights-violating Islamic fundamentalists against another group of human rights-violating Islamic fundamentalists are excused from the final exam. You already got it.

Comment

I sometimes label things I write as "satire," as without the label I often receive both well-meaning and incredibly obscene comments and emails challenging the stories. After learning of the nearly-pointless psych evaluation vetting procedures ("Now look at this inkblot. Does it look like a splatter of ISIS brain matter on the end of your rifle butt, or moderate brain matter?"), I feel it may be clearer to label posts such as this one "Not Satire" and leave the purposefully satirical ones alone.

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