There never was a vacuum in Syria. Assad’s Sunni rivals always teemed with Islamic supremacists. Hoping no one would notice this inconvenient fact, proponents of American intervention vaporously labeled them the “rebels.” But there’s only so many times you can play that game, and our Beltway wizards had done it before in Egypt and Libya, where “Arab Spring” delirium was already being exposed as the pernicious rise of Islamic supremacism. So the interveners talked up the “moderate Syrian opposition,” hoping no one would notice that the “moderates” they had in mind were mainly the Muslim Brotherhood, who seem “moderate” compared to al-Qaeda the same way Al Capone seems moderate if you compare him with Charles Manson.

It is not that there was a complete absence of authentic moderate Muslim and non-Muslim democrats in Syria. There simply aren’t enough of them to make a difference. The brute fact is that only Islamic supremacists and their ruthless jihadist factions had a chance to overthrow Assad, if they got enough outside help.

The claim that Obama abandoned the opposition is equally bogus. Because of the president’s delusional theory that the Muslim Brotherhood are “moderates” we can ally with, he quietly colluded with Qatar and the Saudis to arm and train the Syrian “rebels.” It blew up on him because the “moderates” are not moderate. The Brothers concur in al-Qaeda’s sharia goals and readily resort to terrorism if that is what is necessary to achieve them. So arming the rebels, as Obama helped do, necessarily meant arming anti-American jihadists. This has proved embarrassing, so what Obama has done, at least so far, is refrain from giving the “rebels” decisive aid — the kind he gave the “rebels” in Libya, to disastrous effect in Benghazi. That is hardly an aid vacuum.

Similarly fatuous is the vacuum narrative regarding Iraq.