Putin Goes To War . . . Real War . . . Again. Where Is Obama?

[wa3zrm]

Yesterday Obama ran to the podium using a horrendous crime at a college in Oregon to rail against guns. As traumatic as these insane killings are, when Obama addressed the Nation, barely any information was available from Oregon. What was he up to? Was he throwing a shiny object, gun control, out there for the media to goggle at while, . . . while what?
Well, while Putin is settling into a long term encampment in Syria, and going to war. War! Encampment? OK, well not so much encampment as ‘occupation’. Yes, that’s better — occupation, which in Putin terminology translates to ‘annex’ if his dalliance in, well, annexation of Crimea, is any attestation of intent.
Our piteous media cannot find the words to protect Obama, so it blathers on, inanely attempting to explain something it evidently does not understand as it pears in vain through the eyes of a blundering Administration — what can it possibly be thinking? It's so very difficult for the media to make sense of lies and obfuscations flowing out of this Administration, but it tries. Putin understands, and furthermore, Putin takes action. He is ruthless — a merciless and sadistic graduate that makes the KGB proud.
Putin now has tanks, drones, bombers, fighter jets, and he has ships in Tartus, Syria, his only naval base in the Mediterranean Sea. Where’s Obama? Oh, is that him hiding behind Kerry? To make sure the world gets the message, China is also ‘acting’, having sent military advisers aboard a naval vessel which will arrive in the coming days. Israeli military news indicates that this Chinese ‘help’ is in the form of Chinese aircraft carrier Liaonig-CV-16.
Instead of backdooring weapons to Syrian rebels as Obama and Clinton attempted in the Benghazi/Turkey-arm-the-Jihadist fiasco, Putin is waging a war directly and unequivocally on all Syrian rebels. Instead of arming some ‘guys’, but not those ‘guys’, and maybe these other ‘guys,’ but we’re not sure because we don’t really know who’s who, Putin is attacking REBELS. But, but, but, Obama says those aren’t the right rebels. No kidding? Apparently now, Obama likes the Al-Quaeda and other rebels and says he doesn’t like those other guys, the ISIS guys. So what of those?
Putin will in time attack all rebels. Why? Because Syria will be his, and he will not stand for rebellion. Remember how he acted on rebels in Chechnya where he destroyed wide swaths of towns killing men, women and children without flinching. Syria will in time no longer be a haven for countless terrorist cells and terror launching pads. There is plenty of lucre awaiting Putin at the end of his campaign.
Syria will be a gateway to energy cash, particularly gas, with Europe, as well as China, waiting in the Mediterranean for the pipeline to deliver the vital energy source flowing out of Iran’s South Pars field.
Europeans had anticipated that Iranian gas coming through an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline would have provided them a counterbalance against blackmailing at the hands of Putin’s Gazprom. Europe’s hoped-for diversification in now another dream wreaked on the shoals of incompetence and inaction by Obama and the E.U. This was also one of the main reasons why the E.U. went along with Obama’s incomprehensible Iranian deal. European nations needed alternatives to Putin’s oil and gas.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

[R.B. Kazenzakis]

Perhaps measuring twice before he cuts once. If you are going to tangle with Russians, you better be damn sure you have a plan to reach a suitable outcome. I know whereof I speak: I am married to one.

[wa3zrm]

Putin humiliates Obama in Syria
My San Antonio ^ |

If it had the wit, the Obama administration would be not angered but appropriately humiliated. President Barack Obama has, once again, been outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin. Two days earlier at the United Nations, Obama had welcomed the return, in force, of the Russian military to the Middle East — for the first time in decades — to help fight the Islamic State.
The ruse was transparent. Russia is not in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The Kremlin was sending fighter planes, air-to-air missiles and SA-22 anti-aircraft batteries. Against an Islamic State that has no air force, no planes, no helicopters?
Russia then sent reconnaissance drones over Western Idlib and Hama, where there are no Islamic State fighters. Followed by bombing attacks on Homs and other opposition strongholds that had nothing to do with the Islamic State.
Indeed, some of these bombed fighters were U.S.-trained and U.S.-equipped. Asked if we didn’t have an obligation to support our allies on the ground, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter bumbled that Russia’s actions exposed its policy as self-contradictory.
Carter made it sound as if the Russian offense was to have perpetrated an oxymoron, rather than a provocation — and a direct challenge to what’s left of the U.S. policy of supporting a moderate opposition.
The whole point of Russian intervention is to keep Assad in power. Putin has no interest in fighting the Islamic State. Indeed, the second round of Russian air attacks was on insurgents opposed to the Islamic State. The Islamic State is nothing but a pretense for Russia. And Obama fell for it.
Just three weeks ago, Obama chided Russia for its military buildup, wagging his finger that it was “doomed to failure.” Yet by Monday he was publicly welcoming Russia to join the fight against the Islamic State. He not only acquiesced to the Russian buildup, he held an ostentatious meeting with Putin, thereby marking the ignominious collapse of Obama’s vaunted campaign to isolate Putin diplomatically over Crimea.
Putin then showed his utter contempt for Obama by launching his air campaign against our erstwhile anti-Assad allies not 48 hours after meeting Obama. Which the U.S. found out about when a Russian general knocked on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and delivered a brusque demarche announcing that the attack would begin within an hour and warning the U.S. to get out of the way.
In a news conference, Secretary Carter averred that he found such Russian behavior “unprofessional.”
Good grief. Russia, with its inferior military and hemorrhaging economy, had just eaten Carter’s lunch, seizing the initiative and exposing U.S. powerlessness — and the secretary of defense deplores what? Russia’s lack of professional etiquette
Makes you want to weep
Consider: When Obama became president, the surge in Iraq had succeeded and the U.S. had emerged as the dominant regional actor, able to project power throughout the region. Sunday, Iraq announced the establishment of a joint intelligence-gathering center with Iran, Syria and Russia, symbolizing the new “Shiite-crescent” alliance stretching from Iran across the northern Middle East to the Mediterranean, under the umbrella of Russia, the rising regional hegemon.
Russian planes roam free over Syria attacking Assad’s opposition as we stand by helpless. Meanwhile, the U.S. secretary of state beseeches the Russians to negotiate “de-conflict” arrangements — so that we and they can each bomb our own targets safely. It has come to this.
Why is Putin moving so brazenly? Because he’s got only 16 months to push on the open door that is Obama. He knows he’ll never again see a U.S. president such as this — one who told the General Assembly Monday of “believing in my core that we, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion.”
They cannot? Has he looked at the world around him ablaze with conflict and coercion?
Wouldn’t you take advantage of these 16 months if you were Putin, facing a man living in a faculty-lounge fantasy world? Where was Obama when Putin began bombing Syria? Leading a U.N. meeting on countering violent extremism.
Seminar to follow.

[fl0]

Haha, you think Putin is the bad guy? he hasn't annex the Krim...it was a legal Referendum...shooting down the MH17 with a BUK rocket? Nope it was a isrealish rocket Obama is a the Bad Guy...Ur country supply the IS with weapons, ur President gives the Al Nusra in Syria Weapons. Ur Country is a Lakai of the Wall Street and City Of London.... RUSSIA is your Nemesis...RIP USA[emoji4]

[wa3zrm]

Haha, you think Putin is the bad guy? he hasn't annex the Krim...it was a legal Referendum...shooting down the MH17 with a BUK rocket? Nope it was a isrealish rocket Obama is a the Bad Guy...Ur country supply the IS with weapons, ur President gives the Al Nusra in Syria Weapons. Ur Country is a Lakai of the Wall Street and City Of London.... RUSSIA is your Nemesis...RIP USA[emoji4]

[wa3zrm]

[wa3zrm]

Russian Soldiers to Join Fight in Syria

MOSCOW — Ratcheting up the confrontation over the Syria war, Russia said Monday that its “volunteer” ground forces would join the fight, and NATO warned the Kremlin after at least one Russian warplane trespassed into Turkey’s airspace.
The saber-rattling on both sides reflected a dangerous new big-power entanglement in the war, as longstanding differences between Russia and the United States over President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his opponents increasingly play out not only in the halls of the United Nations but on the battlefield in Syria.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...

[wa3zrm]

How Russia outplayed America in the Middle East's great game

The Week ^ |


The cliché of the Russian chessmaster strategist might be a cliché for a reason. The regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin might have feet of clay, but the man is smart.
By going all-in on the side of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the war in Syria, he has put Russia at the center of the great game in the Middle East.
Now, for all intents and purposes, Russia controls the airspace over Syria. Russia has had a military base and seaport in Syria for a long time, and is now bringing over long-range surface-to-air missiles (Russia's are among the best in the world). And if Putin says, "Now Syria's airspace is ours, and if you encroach we will take you down," do you think Barack Obama will call his bluff? Europe?
And if the Syrian government keeps using chemical weapons, and the U.S. didn't intervene when they crossed that red line, will they do so now that Syria is backed by Russia?
Russia has clear interests in the region. First, there is the longstanding Russian interest in warm waters and warm water ports. Second, as Vladimir Putin has pointed out, Russia has its own domestic Islamic terrorism problem in the Caucasus, and many Russian Islamic terrorists have joined ISIS. And third, Russia enjoys frustrating U.S. geostrategic interests, and that includes America's strategic dominance over the Middle East. Now for local regimes, Russia looks more like a power-broker, and looks like more of a reliable force than the United States, which says one thing and then does another (see: Mubarak, Hosni).
Russia has strong ties with Iran, now emboldened even more by the recent nuclear deal, which frees up funds that Iran will almost certainly use, at least partially, to fund Hezbollah and other allied groups across the Middle East, and is getting cozy with Iran's good friend Iraq. Iraq has agreed to share intelligence with the Russians and has cleared Russia to make intelligence flights over its airspace. Now Russia stands as a powerful presence in the northern Middle East, a region close to the Caucasus and to Central Asia where Russia has key strategic interests.
It's worth pointing out that while this is clearly smart gamesmanship from Putin, he has just been exploiting U.S. mistakes.
Nobody likes Assad. But it's also the case that in the Middle East, there are only lesser evils. The U.S. supports a military-backed regime in Egypt, and supports Saudi Arabia, probably the most dystopian place in the world this side of North Korea. Let's get real.
Assad is a tyrant, but Assad also protected minorities in Syria because it was his own interest as head of the Alawites. Syria's civil war has been the occasion for the cleansing of religious minorities in Syria, particularly its Christian population, among the oldest in the world, as well as countless other acts of barbarism. The idea that it was possible to back "moderates" who would magically win against both Assad and Islamists and establish order and maybe even a rule of law, simply because they received M-4s and "training," was always a mirage. And the destabilization of Syria further destabilized Iraq, which now depends even more on Iran to keep itself together. Brilliant work.
Here's what America should have done: essentially what Putin is doing now. It was likely possible, a year or two ago, when the Syrian government looked to be on its last legs, to ensure a reasonable outcome. How? Crush the worst enemies of the Syrian government with airpower, intelligence, and special forces, and support Syria's army, which clearly, if nothing else, is battle-hardened and knows the terrain and can fight on the ground.
(Does that mean the U.S. would crush Syria's democratic, moderate opposition? Frankly, it's hard to say whether there is any democratic, moderate opposition in Syria worth mentioning, except people posing as moderate democrats to get weapons from the U.S. Certainly the U.S. should have started by hitting the most extreme opponents first.)
Of course, the U.S. should and could have extracted significant concessions: give up the alliance with Iran, give up its weapons of mass destruction, give up Assad, form a unity government (even if just to keep up appearances), sign a peace treaty with Israel, and over the long run, modernize the public sector and the economy to give people jobs (because, yes, even though jobs alone won't defeat ISIS, over the long run it does help to beat back terror, or at least keep it from metastasizing too much). In other words, becoming another Jordan or another Egypt, and maybe even over the long run becoming a modern, well-run country. Not a democracy, not the best place in the world, but certainly a much better place than Syria is now, or now will ever be for the foreseeable future.
Such a plan would have required strategic foresight and fortitude, which has been lacking from the U.S. government for many decades. A superpower can and ought to do better.

[minnix]

Do you ever have your own opinions or analysis wa3zrm? Or do you just rely on the internet to tell you how to think?

[wa3zrm]

Do you ever have your own opinions or analysis wa3zrm? Or do you just rely on the internet to tell you how to think?

See below...

[Premium Parrots]

Do you ever have your own opinions or analysis wa3zrm? Or do you just rely on the internet to tell you how to think?

Hey!! This is how I learn whats going on in this world. Like many others here on snuson. I'd be pretty much clueless otherwise.

He is simply providing links to current events, there is no need to give his opinion, unless he wants to.