Russia will target US jets in parts of Syria, defence ministry says

I think the russians are thinking globally rather than confining the tension to syria

This is a dangerous game putin is playing

 

Warned to stay on our side of the river, even though the jet we shot down already was on our side of the river. Whatever Russia....

 

I have no doubt Russia is already supporting ISIS. This would not be new.

 

America too.

Who is in ISIS is unknown. No one admits it to a Russian or an American soldier.


What we do know is that people change sides in wars. That allies today are enemies next week.
Complex AA like American Forward Air, comes with covert forces to use it for you.

 

One can hardly blame Trump for not wanting the same fate as JFK. He is many things, but a Brave Man is not one of those things. A principled man is not one of those things.

 

Foreign adventures in failed states combined with economic disruptions at home combined to topple to USSR years ago. Putin is repeating history. Russia is half the size and half the population is was then.

like Mussolini, dreams of restoring the old empire with no means to sustain it will result in another collapse after he is gone.

 

LOL. Funny stuff. The US is playing the most dangerous game. We have people in DC like Graham and McCain, who salivate over a war with Russia. Of course they can retreat underground for years and its people like you who will get incinerated or die of radiation or famine

Russia is not breaking international law, he usual culprit is, us, the US. And anyone who supports this criminality is a criminal. Seem we have some of those criminal minds here.

 

BTW, targeting our aircraft is not the same as shooting them down.

Russia is not some 3rd world military, or even a middle eastern military. You won't see a one sided shock and awe boys and girls. You will see just how inept we are when faced with a real military and high skills. It will not be pretty if this ever happens. And this post will be here as a reminder. I know more about this **** than I am willing to reveal. Trust me or don't, for it really does not matter. The proof is in the pudding but I pray we don't ever taste that pudding.

 

One Mind(ed);

Russia is not breaking international law. The usual culprit is, the US.

Spoken like an old bolshie. How are the rest of them doing in the bolshie retirement home?

 

Well, I disagree with you. I find it very hard to support murderers of our own people. Then again, I presume you consider politicians of my country being non humans, devoid of logic and even a single drop of human decency. So continue having no doubts, it worked perfectly for billions of humans across history who fertilise military graveyards across the world.

 

Obviously they have people like that in russia too

I don't listen to mccain on any issue

If russian shoots down US warplanes in Syria or the Black Sea or anywhere its because the russians want a war with America

 

Aimed at, not necessarily shot down:

Putin wants the US to cooperate in Syria:

The Russians don’t anticipate their jets would be attacked:

So, how far before push comes to shove?

The Russian military is making the decisions, and more likely to overreact:

Change the application of their air defence missile systems on site?

They’re trying to figure out how much latitude the US military has:

 

The russians are not dealing with obama who they could bully and push around

Most people worry that trump is too unpredictable and will not back down which would lead to a war that they would blame on trump entirely

 

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And here's Russia's stealth as it appears off radar.

And the KLA were labelled terrorists by our government and then they changed their minds and decided to use them to split up Yugoslavia.

 

There's some of that, Obama got duped by Putin with Syria's chemical weapons, Obama couldn't conjure an effective response to the Crimean annexation either, he got pushed around over the Russian intervention in Georgia too. Strange lefties think Putin wanted Trump to win, why would he think Trump and not Hillary would be more like Obama?

Maybe, but Trump has indicated he's giving the military more decision-making capacities, that MOAB in Afghanistan was the military's idea, not Trump's. I don't worry about Trump's unpredictability, what worries me is the predictability of the military, they'll choose force.

 

Trump will let the military decide how to fight a war which is good.

But I don't think he will let them decide when we go to war

 

Idiocy, plain idiocy! Since when is a leader who is elected with almost 90% of the vote a dictator? Even today I read that Assad would get 90% of the vote if the elections were being held tomorrow.

As for the Syrian people, they are the most heroic people in the world. What other nation has been invaded by countries such as: Saudi Arabia, Israel, US, France, Britain, Qatar, and Turkey, and has given so much to maintain their sovereignty and the leader they want? If anyone deserves the world's respect it is Syria... and if anyone deserves the world's contempt, then it would be: Saudi Arabia, Israel, US, France, Britain, Qatar, and Turkey.

As for Nato, maybe it's time the US stopped the money flow. Once the countries have to start pulling out of their own pockets, it might dissolve the way it should have done years ago.

 

Literally 100% of the time.

 

Absolutely true, all dictators win their "elections" by overwhelming majorities, I won't bother to look it up, but I'm sure Chavez and Maduro, Khadaffy, Saddam and certainly Assad, all got at least 90% of the vote.

 

There are elections whose outcome is preordained even before they are held and often don't involve anyone else on the ballot. Participation is clearly organized by state institutions and there are no major rallies or events or anything in support of anyone else. Not just propagandists who are trying to achieve some agenda, but every neutral observer and everyone else both ignores those elections and would consider them a sham. Those are the elections you allude to.

Earlier elections for the presidency in Syria followed that model. But the 2014 elections were different and a genuine reflection of public opinion in Syria. A public opinion which even western pollsters have found to show more support for Assad (and those such as Iran who support him) than all those opposed to him. For that reason, and the fact that Assad doesn't even have control over much of his country due to the civil war, I think the attempts to paint him as a "dictator" at this time are misleading. Whatever you might think of him, is right now the 'genuine leader' of a majority of Syrians who are opposed to what the rest of the world except their allies are doing in their country. To be sure, there are those who oppose him in Syria and many who are oppose him with a vengeance. But they - and the path they have chosen - is not the path of the majority of the people in Syria.

 

It's not even necessarily that the votes are rigged or anything, it can simply be that no viable opposition is allowed to form, like we see in Russia.

Also one can look at Egypt as an instructive case as well. The Egyptians vote in Islamists, the government is overthrown by the military, and suddenly they vote in military men.

In Hungary after WWII the Soviets held elections, and when the results weren't what they wanted they held elections again. They got the right results the second time.

 

They want peace and stability. That's understandable.

Give them the vote in 2010 and Assad is gone. Give them a vote in 2025 and Assad is gone.

The fact that force was required to oust him from office is what led to the war. This is a fundamental weakness of non-democratic systems once legitimacy breaks down.

 

Maybe, but I find it telling that for the years during which the Syrian civil war was being waged, the groups who didn't want the Syrian people to have a say on the matter, and opposed the proposals from Iran and Russia to let the Syrian people decide Assad's future in elections monitored under UN auspices and monitored by international organizations where the opposition would be allowed to field its candidates as well, was rejected by those such as the US who were claiming the mantle of democracy in Syria. Of course, the fact that the US would even pretend that democracy and human rights are any part of the equation, while being allied to likes of Wahhabi Arabia in that conflict, would never pass even the laugh test but for the influence of western media in shaping many people's views.

 

In the meantime, I find it a bit surprising that no one is asking where the US F-15 which shot down an Iranian drone since this Russian warning was operating from? None of the reports, which would ordinarily mention the base from which such a plane took off, mention the issue. And that is an interesting question to me because if the F-15 flew from a US aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, then it wouldn't show the Russians enforcing their red line. If it few from Incirik airforce base in Turkey, this would also be significant showing the Turks cooperating, or at least not opposing, the US action even as they are clearly upset with the US moves supporting the Kurdish groups in Syria. If it flew from Jordan, on the other hand, it will mean that eventually the Jordanians will be dragged in this fight. The so-called "Hashemite Kingdom" that rules over a state in alliance with the US, where a majority of the population is Palestinian, needs to thread much more carefully than it is doing lately.

 

The elections would be a sham. There is no organized, coherent opposition to Assad.

Not that it matters. The US is not in Syria to bring democracy, that would just be a nifty side-effect... and I'm not sure how "nifty" it would be in the long run. We're in Syria to fight Iranian influence.

It just so happens that bringing democracy and fighting Iranian influence amount to the same thing: Booting Assad.

Unfortunately for American interests, I think Assad is going to stay. There probably will be a democratic system in Syria following the war, and over time a coherent opposition will form. That coherent opposition will be the Muslim Brotherhood or some Muslim Brotherhood-esque group. It'll be interesting to see how long Assad allows this opposition to coalesce before cracking down, and how his Iranian allies will react to that crackdown.