1. This move is possibly not too late, but it is certainly too little if the goal is to defeat Assad. The battle for Aleppo, the center of rebel strength, appears to be upon us. If Aleppo falls to the combined forces of Assad and the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, many thousands of people will be killed and the uprising will, in all likelihood, come to an end. Civil unrest will continue, but the back of the rebellion will have been broken.

The rebels haven’t been doing well lately — they’ve been making headlines mainly for YouTube videos showing atrocities committed by some in their ranks, rather than for military victories — and small arms won’t alter the balance. Even if handguns and rifles are all that the rebels would need for victory, delivering such weapons isn’t simply a matter of driving trucks into Aleppo. It will take time to build a proper pipeline to “vetted” rebels, which is to say, rebels who promise not to one day kill Americans with these weapons. Anti-tank weapons may be of help, but at the moment these don’t appear to be forthcoming, and portable surface-to-air missiles will most definitely not be forthcoming.

2. That’s because we don’t actually know who we’ll be helping. Will these small arms find their way to al-Qaeda-associated groups, like the Nusra Front? We don’t even know who owns guns in the U.S. — how are we going to know for sure who owns our taxpayer-supplied firearms in Syria? Recent history in Afghanistan is very much on President Barack Obama’s mind: The weapons the U.S. supplied to mujahedeen fighters there to battle the Soviets three decades ago eventually were used against the U.S. and its allies. It would be best, from the president’s perspective, if this did not happen again.