Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

Clinton began privately pushing for what she would call a “carefully vetted and trained force of moderate rebels who could be trusted” with American weapons. As she described the events in her book Hard Choices, she invited then CIA director David Petraeus to her house for lunch in July 2012 to brainstorm about ways to recruit and build such a force. If America “was willing finally to get in the game, we could be much more effective in isolating the extremists and empowering the moderates inside Syria,” she wrote. By late summer, following extensive meetings with NATO counterparts and rebel leaders, Clinton was “reasonably confident” that an effective strategy could be put in place, she said. Petraeus’s CIA put together a plan for building, training, and arming a moderate rebel army that could eventually overthrow the regime and establish authority in provinces now effectively controlled by Islamists. The plan was presented to President Obama at a White House meeting in late August, and Panetta was among the core group of senior advisers to argue for its acceptance. “We’re outside the game,” Panetta would argue. “We don’t have any credibility with [Syrian moderates]. We’re giving them nonlethal assistance and they’re dying.” Panetta was not naïve about the risks. Even the most carefully vetted rebel group might decide to switch sides, or commit a massacre using American-supplied guns. Arms given to friendly fighters could easily end up in the wrong hands. “There’s always a...