How exactly would you have proposed to "muzzle" the Qataris? They do not take instructions from the US.
Promising if you assume that money is the only variable, but we all know that money is not the only variable.
What you're not acknowledging is that choosing a proxy, especially in a fight with no clear and realistic desired end state and no compelling US interest at stake, is a blind two-footed jump onto the mother of all slippery slopes. What do you do when your proxy doesn't win? Do you write it off, or double down, or triple down, a course that inexorably points toward direct involvement?
Of course it's easy to say that the proxy would win if only the US did whatever you suggest, but in all of these fights there's always a pack of people claiming that it'll all be right if only a few tens of millions get thrown at whoever they like. What they say and what happens are two very different things.
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