We push them in a direction and then decry the direction they take.
When people's lives are in danger they have the right to defend themselves by whatever means are available. If the US is the only country willing or appearing to be willing to help then so be it.
It's a bit much for us lofty armchair revolutionaries to decide, having withheld our support, where they can and cannot get aid.
It's rather reminiscent, some time ago, of the US protesting at Nicaragua buying Migs from the Soviets . Especially, when the US itself had earlier turned down Nicaraguan attempts to buy US aircraft. Chomsky talks a lot about it.
Or, indeed, the Spanish government in 1936, in their fight against the Fascists of Franco, Hitler & Mussolini, having been denied aid by the US, British and French, being forced to accept aid from Stalin which gave huge power to the Communists in Spain, and led to the destruction of the Social Revolution.
At times of danger people will take aid from whatever source is available.
Graeber (from Ian, above): "What I am speaking of here...is the feeling that foiling imperial designs — or avoiding any appearance of even appearing to be on the ‘same side’ as an imperialist in any context — should always take priority over anything else."
That seems to be the mainstream view on the Lifeboat.
Graeber, again. "This attitude only makes sense if you’ve secretly decided that real revolutions are impossible. Because surely, if one actually felt that a genuine popular revolution was occurring, say, in the [Rojava] city of Kobanî and that its success could be a beacon and example to the world, one would also not hold that it is better for those revolutionaries to be massacred by genocidal fascists than for a bunch of white intellectuals to sully the purity of their reputations by suggesting that US imperial forces already conducting airstrikes in the region might wish to direct their attention to the fascists’ tanks. Yet, astoundingly, this was the position that a very large number of self-professed ‘radicals’ actually did take.'"
And, indeed, are still taking. After witnessing, nay, colluding, rejoicing even, in the very destruction of that social revolution. We are hypocrites. We have thrown aside any pretense of being revolutionaries. We are like the Bolsheviks of 1917 and 1936.
We have some nerve. We withhold our support, pushing them in a particular direction, and then we protest about the direction they take.
Any halfway decent left winger should have supported Rojava and it's aspirations. Graeber, as usual, was spot on.