I’ve heard lots of arguments 4 y the Syrian opposition had little support in Washington but here’s the real reason

They were stupid

They failed to create a real grassroots advocacy movement to support and work in conjunction with government affairs professionals

Instead they hired grifters like Jack Kingston to lobby for them

Jack is a shark that took advantage of them and never even understood the issues

Jack barely did anything to earn his fee

When confronted with his failure to register under FARA his defense was we Syrians had no chance of success

The truth is that the people who ran to Turkey to run the Syrian opposition were and still are in part grifters themselves

They lacked popular backing and never even cared to work to earn it

The Syrian opposition is both simultaneously accused of being rich western funded and actually dirt broke with almost no influence

Syrian Americans themselves fucked it all up to

Instead of directing resources to political work they shuffled all their money into humanitarian aid

Humanitarian aid is great but it isn’t even a bandage

No matter how many millions they raised it was a droplet in a deep well

But because most of the money was being controlled by Syrian American doctors they funneled that money into SAMS. A doctors group that obviously was fearful of politics and was very comfortable giving money to support other doctors doing humanitarian aid

To this day no one dare say these things even though we all know it’s true

The Syrian opposition is seriously underfunded

Other Syrian American organizations are barely marginally better

They either refuse to work together or work badly together