Texx you really do hate America you would choose putin over America it just makes one shake there head.
No, I'm talking about countries like Israel that used to be US allies and now feel that Russia is more trustworthy than the US. It isn't like we could have prevented all of this middle eastern disaster by not abandoning the area right after getting them to a point where they could begin to help themselves. President Obama used the fact that he 'ended' the war in Iraq as a big part of his second campaign. I guess this is his idea of an end to war... in a void of leadership, chaos
For instance if your country is found guilty of some shady business like working with isis, you still will support it because you live in it?
Do you need us to re-cite the Bush withdrawal agreement again? Okiedokie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.–Iraq_Status_of_Forces_Agreement But the fact is: infidels cannot exert leadership within the context of an Islamic Civil War among 60 million people where the sides are backed by two regional powers. If you fail to learn from our 10 year experience, you are bound to repeat it.
Israel is still our ally. And despite Netanyahu's objections to our policy on Iran, even he has to know that the relationship between Israel and Russia is merely one of convenience while the friendship with the US is deeply rooted.
Israel is still our "ally" and still a terrible one at that. The alliance between US & Israel have always been extremely one-sided, we provide billions in military aid to Israel every year, offers political & military support, transfer military technology to them and yet they consistently one of the worst offenders in terms espionage & stealing both military and industrial tech from us, keep selling both transferred & stolen military tech to other countries and never get punished for their transgressions.
The only people still thirsty for war are the right wingnuts in the GOP that are bought and paid for by the defense industry (and their gullible followers). Check out the OP.
Israel acts in its self-interest like any other state would, as Russia is now, sending airstrikes to help Iran keep Assad in power in order to protect that tiny speck of influence that it still has in the ME, as well it's only naval base in the Med. The only thing I'm surprised by is that it took this long for Putin to do something. Considering that the modern State of Israel was mostly founded by Russians and Poles, has over a million citizens that speak Russian as a first language, and had an entire political party at it's creation devoted to aligning itself with the Soviet Union (and a current one for Russian immigrants) might be more of a legacy than the historic blink of Obama's presidency. Travel to Russia for Israelis is visa-free, and Israel complains often that its defense contractors can't sell (co-American designed) weapons technology like drones and radars to China and Russia. This has been the case since before Obama was a senator and I think you have a very rose-colored notion of the nature of US-Israeli "friendship." As for the creation of Daesh in the vacuum left after the US left, you'll get no argument with me about that. But the vacuum would not have existed if the US hadn't been there in the first place, and I say that having supported the decision to invade at the time. I think taking out Saddam Hussein was inevitable, given the terms and ultimatums of the 90s but asking Americans to support the stability of something ungovernable with their lives and tax dollars for perpetuity is madness and I don't think a single American life is worth sacrificing for the Provisional Shiite Klepto-Ethno-Theocracy of Iraq. Obama did promise to pull out of Iraq, and what happened wasn't a shock to anyone living in the Middle East. The level of corruption mixed with tribal rivalries and brutal superstition makes sub-Saharan Africa look civil and reasonable by comparison and the kind of leadership required to make a fragmented, artificially constructed nation-state like Iraq function at all is something no Western military is ever going to do or any western leader is ever going to allow, including the president or the one before him. What Russia is doing now makes sense considering it's own relationships and vested interests and getting in their way in order to spare the lives of the Al-Nursa Front and 10 guys the US trained in Fort Benning doesn't sound like a winning game to me, and it's sure as hell not one I ever want to see an American die for.
Israel owes it's existence to the largess of American resources, both public and private, but it's ties to Russia go back way further. Many things in Israeli life owe their roots to Russian design, notably it's bureaucracy, and much of 20th century Hebrew vocabulary. When Putin lifted visa restrictions for Israelis, he quipped that he considered Israel a post-soviet Republic, and in many ways, he's not wrong. Still, it's not lost on anyone in Israel that Russia is bffs with Iran and Syria and supplied most of the arms to every nation and non-state actor that ever killed an Israeli.
It's quite obvious that Putin outsmarted Obama. The current US government has been a huge disappointment as far as foreign policy is concerned.
If by outsmarting Obama you mean going in and initially attacking United States CIA trained rebels that weren't part of ISIS but were enemies of Assad the dictator, then yes Putin did do that. If you mean he outsmarted Obama by having some Americans cheer him on for attacking groups that were trained by agents of the United States, I don't think that was Putin doing something to outsmart Obama, as it was a few Americans being made stupid by their opposition to Obama at all costs and allows them to cheer against America.
Putin outsmarts feckless Obama By Charles Krauthammer / Syndicated Columnist Saturday, October 3rd, 2015 at 12:02am “Russia hits Assad’s foes, angering U.S.” – Headline, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 1 WASHINGTON – If it had the wit, the Obama administration would be not angered, but appropriately humiliated. President Obama has, once again, been totally 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 – in order to help fight the Islamic State. The ruse was transparent from the beginning. 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 equipped. Asked if we didn’t have an obligation to support our own 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 maintain Assad in power. Putin has no interest in fighting the Islamic State. Indeed, the second round of Russian air attacks was on rival insurgents opposed to the Islamic State. The Islamic State is nothing but a pretense for Russian intervention. 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 on the subject, 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 door of 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 his subsequent 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 American 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. Last 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 quickly and so brazenly? Because he’s got only 16 more months to push on the open door that is Obama. He knows he’ll never again see an American president such as this – one who once told the General Assembly that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” and told it again last 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 – from Homs to Kunduz, from Sanaa to Donetsk – ablaze with conflict and coercion? Wouldn’t you take advantage of these last 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. http://www.abqjournal.com/653336/opinion/putin-outsmarts-feckless-obama.html
Who would you rather have in power in Syria: Assad or ISIS? Do you actually believe there is another choice? You think the "moderate" Sunnis would be able to hold on to power if Assad fell?
We need to just stay out of it and let them fight it out. That's what we should have done in the first place going back to 2003 but what's done is done.
If the U.S. had left Syria alone, Russia and Iran would have propped up Assad and kept him in power. This is what we have now.
Assad. And no, I don't believe there is any other choice at this point. Naively believing that has been one of many mistakes of the US government in the region.
