After reading articles today about a Russian warplane being shot down by Turkey, my (blonde) head is spinning.
I’m thinking our dear friend Steve has been right all along: The West and Russia and all other foreign forces should get the hell out of the region and let the locals fight it out for themselves.
Because I am getting a sense that things are freakin’ hopeless there — that there is so much discord and hate, there’s nothing we can do to solve it.
As for ISIS, well, Muslims in the region will have to stand up for themselves. Saudi Arabia also could do a lot more, if it really wanted to . . .
For discussion . . .
— Jillian
Jillian Page 
Wow, what a mess.
Russia is unlikely to respond against Turkey directly because Turkey is a NATO country and attacking a NATO country would automatically bring the 28 NATO countries into the conflict. See, children, this is how WW-III began.
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This is what ISIS is hoping for, incidentally . . .
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Did you know that the
War in
Iraq was the only war in US history that was started without provocation?
Trillions of dollars and more than 66,000 US casualties later (and no one can count the war casualties in the middle east, but it’s estimated over a million dead and millions more injured with tens of millions not knowing if they will survive another day.
This- is the legacy of George Bush.
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But wasn’t Saddam Hussein committing atrocities against his own people . . . ?
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So?
As I’ve said before, the tribal factions in the middle east have been fighting each other for centuries.
Yes, Saddam was a very nasty guy, but the US is not the world’s policeman. But the Bush/Cheney crime syndicate needed to get rid of Saddam and a war prize would have been the Iraqi oil fields which would have profited Halliburton (Cheney’s company) immensely.
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You’re right about that. It was all about oil for the U.S. And it’s probably all about oil for Russia in Syria, yes?
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For Russia, it wasn’t oil but a 1978 treaty with Afghanistan that promised support if the country were attacked. In 1979 the opposition to Afghanistan President Taraki staged the Herat Uprising, taking control of the city of Herat. Initially the USSR did not want to be involved, but Taraki finally convinced the USSR to send in the troops.
Taraki is assassinated and the Soviet involvement kept escalating. The US was helping the opposition which included a young Osama Bin Laden.
The USSR Afghanistan operations was the major factor of the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union and its dissolution on December 26, 1991. (Ironically just three days from the 69th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union.)
Similar to the US Vietnam problem, the Soviets called Afghanistan a “Bear Trap”.
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Interesting . . . I wonder if Syria will be considered a bear trap. Certainly, ISIS would like to see it that way.
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