“Congress must now vote to support the first steps of what will be a long march toward victory,” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Following this clarion call, 71 House Republicans bolted to join 85 Democrats in voting no to U.S. funds to train and arm Syrian rebels.

Why the hesitation? Because our strategy in Syria is to rely on a Free Syrian Army that has been the least effective force in that civil war — and untrustworthy to boot. Units of the FSA have handed their U.S. weapons over to ISIS.

Sen. John McCain raises a second issue. The FSA came into being to overthrow Bashar Assad. Now these rebels are to be retrained to fight ISIS. How effective will the FSA be when told to change sides and become de facto allies of the dictator against whom they took up arms?

Projections are that it will take a year before we can train, equip and arm rebels — and send 5,000 fighters into battle in Syria.

The United States will then be ensuring that a three-year civil war that has resulted in millions of refugees and cost 190,000 lives will go on indefinitely.

There are other reasons why many in Congress are reluctant to vote funds to train and arm Syrian rebels. First, as the president has said, it is still “somebody else’s civil war.”

Second, the White House has not advanced a credible war plan. Third, our commander in chief is not a war leader.

And, again, this FSA upon which McCarthy’s victory hangs is not even the jayvee.

Brushing aside these concerns is The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial, “The Syria Campaign,” describes how the FSA can emerge victorious.

“A devastating air campaign against the Islamic State might at least weaken the group sufficiently to embolden a revolt and send new recruits to the FSA. The model here is the air cover NATO gave to Kosovars as they fought Serbian aggressors in 1999.”

But were the Serbs really “aggressors” in fighting to hold their cradle province of Kosovo, which ethnic Albanians were trying to tear away?

Does The Journal believe Hezbollah and Iran, which have expended blood and treasure sustaining their ally Assad in his civil war, will sit still and watch us bomb him?

What if our air campaign against ISIS, as our air attacks in Iraq seem to have done, brings recruits rushing not to the FSA but to ISIS? Before we went back into the Iraq war, we were told ISIS had 15,000 fighters. Now there are estimates of 30,000.

And if our bombing campaign against Assad breaks him, who comes to power in Damascus, if not ISIS, al-Nusra or the Islamic Front? What then becomes of the Christian and Shia minorities?

“Our key allies are the Kurds, the parts of the Iraqi military that aren’t dominated by Iraq’s militia, and the moderate Sunnis in Syria and Iraq,” says The Journal.

But if those are our key allies, then the “long march” to victory of which the majority leader speaks appears to have no end. And what will victory look like?

Pat Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”

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