After coming to the conclusion that the Syrian government has indeed been using chemical weapons, the Obama administration has decided to help the rebels by arming them with small arms and ammunition, inserting the country into someone else’s civil war, reports The New York Times.

The CIA will carry out this assistance, which may also include anti-tank weapons in addition to the small arms, but will not include anti-aircraft weapons, despite the rebellion’s cries that such weapons are desperately needed. Others also believe that’s needed to help stop the chemical attacks, and also to curtail Iran’s shipments of weapons into the country for President Bashar al-Assad and his troops.

The world’s reaction to these plans has been rather cold. Russia doesn’t quite believe our evidence that Assad and his government actually used chemical weapons, citing our “errors” on Iraq’s supposed stockpile of WMDs while trying not to cite those. The U.K. claims to have evidence that the rebels have at least tried to acquire their own chemical weapons to use. France wants to exert pressure on the Syrian government, but won’t say anything about whether they believe arming the rebels will help or not.

And the U.N. flat-out opposes arming the rebels, saying that there can’t be true certainty about the use of chemical weapons without an on-the-ground investigation, which hasn’t happened.

However, some in the Middle East, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have criticized what they say is a lukewarm response from the U.S. so far to help the rebels and bring down Assad’s regime.

Syria itself has said that giving aid to their rebellion may result in attacks on U.S. soil, like the Sept. 11 attacks. He pointed to the aid that the U.S. gave to Islamic militants in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, of which Osama bin Laden was one leader. After the Soviets were driven out of Afghanistan, he used the influence and networks he acquired to found al Qaeda.

The U.S. also developed a close relationship with Iraq, specifically, between Iraq’s intelligence service and the CIA. We helped Iraq in its war with Iran by supplying them with our intelligence and with technology licenses, among other things. While we were not directly responsible for Saddam Hussein’s rise to power (that happened in the late 1960s to mid-1970s), we did enable his later behavior quite a bit.

The Syrian rebels are a mixture, with the largest faction being the Free Syrian Army, which has declared itself non-sectarian. However, other factions are decidedly Islamic, and some extremely so. One faction, called al Nusra, has in fact pledged allegiance to the al Qaeda contingent in Iraq, and they are gaining momentum and power due to certain disorganization in the Free Syrian Army. President Assad has declared them all to be terrorists and is calling his war a war on terrorism.

Gee, that sounds familiar.

However, Assad has also been a backer of Hezbollah, and Hezbollah responded to our announcement of sending arms to the rebellions with a vow that they will keep fighting, and stand with Assad’s regime. The rebel faction pledging allegiance to al Qaeda stands in opposition to Hezbollah, greatly complicating any involvement by Western governments, including ours.

The administration considers the use of chemical weapons to be a red line that Syria has now crossed, which is why they want to start funneling arms to the rebellion. However, experts say that our involvement here, waging a war “by proxy” will not necessarily have the effect that we want, which is to bring down the Syrian regime and institute democracy (hmmm…that, too, sounds familiar).

P.J. Crowley, a professor at the George Washington University Institute of Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, says that this type of thing is intended to raise costs for your adversaries, and that it can succeed or backfire. Following his line of thinking, given that there’s a strong, militant Islamic influence in the rebellion, it will likely backfire as it did in Afghanistan in the ’80s. Perhaps moreso, since this may soon start shaping into another Sunni vs. Shiite Muslim conflict.

Elizabeth O’Bagy, a senior research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, believes that arming the rebels with small arms and anti-tank weapons will not be enough, but that our goals must also minimize the risk to civilians and the risk of endangering the stability of the entire region.

The stability of the entire region appears to be negatively affected every time we stick our noses into conflicts there. Given that this is not a straight-up civil war, that there are other factors involved, we’re walking straight into a very thick and tangled briar patch. The Obama administration is showing the same kind of ignorance on the effect our arming the rebellion can have on the entire region that previous administrations have shown when it comes to actively taking sides in these types of conflicts. At least twice, providing aid to one side in a conflict has backfired badly on us.