To the best of my ability I write about my experience of the Universe Past, Present and Future
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Putin Hijacks Obamas War on ISIS?
This isn't true so far. So far he is only killing Sunni Families related to rebels who want to overthrow Assad. ISIS has been paid off for now by Assad for sure and likely Putin too. So, so far Putin has NOT attacked ISIS at all
If Putin takes out ISIS it will be because they betrayed him in some way. Anyone who betrays Putin dies. ISIS is like this too. So, likely they understand each other.
The
Kremlin boss didn't just start bombing Syria today. He made himself a
central player in the world's struggle to clamp down on the so-called
Islamic State.
The
Kremlin boss didn’t just start bombing Syria today. He made himself a
central player in the world’s struggle to clamp down on the so-called
Islamic State.
There’s
a new decision-maker in the U.S. war against ISIS. But he’s not a
general in the Pentagon or a minister in Damascus or Baghdad.
His office in the Kremlin and his name is Vladimir Putin.
The Russian president ordered a major bombing campaign
Wednesday that struck U.S. allies and aided the forces of Syria’s
dictator. That undermined one cornerstone of the American war
effort—support of so-called “moderate” rebels—while making a second
stated goal of the Obama administration more difficult: the ouster of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In effect, Moscow’s airstrikes were a
message to Washington: If you want to get rid of Assad—or build a force
that can take on ISIS—you’re going to have to deal with us.
“The
dynamic has changed,” one U.S. defense official said. And the new
American dependence on Russia could widen a rift between the two
countries over the future of the Syrian regime and how to bring a
five-year-long civil war to an end.
Rebel groups in Syria that have received military equipment from the United States said they came under attack on Wednesday by Russian aircraft. U.S. officials corroborated their account to The Daily Beast. Reports
indicated that the group that was hit has its base in Hama, at a
critical front line in the Syrian civil war. The group is believed to
have been vetted by the CIA and has posted videos of its fighters using
American anti-tank weapons against Syrian regime forces.
Had the
U.S. and Russian militaries communicated about the airstrikes in
advance, a process known as “deconfliction” that’s meant to protect
forces in the air and on the ground, those attacks could have been
prevented. But the U.S. and Russia never got past the early stages of
such talks.
The strikes on U.S.-backed
rebels belied prior assurances from Russian officials, including Putin,
that their strikes were aimed at simply supporting Assad and attacking
ISIS. That pledge apparently evaporated the moment Russian planes took
off for their bombing runs. On Wednesday, U.S. officials acknowledged
that the strikes, so far, appear to be conducted in areas where the
Islamic militant group doesn’t have a stronghold.
“Multiple
strikes” hit near the city of Homs, and areas west of the
Damascus-Aleppo corridor, areas largely free of ISIS, one defense
official said.
“It does appear that they were in areas where there
probably no ISIL forces,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged to
reporters, using the administration’s preferred acronym for the group.
Oddly, Carter also said in the same press conference that he took “the Russians at their word” about their intentions in the air campaign—to strike at ISIS, and support the Assad regime.
NH delegation hopeful deal can be reached on Syria
WMUR - Manchester, NH
Privately,
U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that the bombing campaign forces
them to deal with Russia. Militarily, the U.S. will now have to watch
for Russian strikes and their impact on the war. Diplomatically, the
coalition must give Russia a seat at the table.
Some defense
officials were visibly frustrated that Russia could have a say in the
outcome of the war even after the United States has spent $3.87 billion,
according to the latest Pentagon figures, and conducted nearly 7,100
strikes and sought in vain to train local fighters.
The
picture that emerged Wednesday afternoon was of a U.S. administration
that wasn’t taken by surprise when Russia attacked—American officials
had been telegraphing the strikes for nearly 10 days—but
that had no real response to a Russian offensive that has now
encompassed both the ISIS forces that the U.S. is trying to destroy.
Privately,
U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that the bombing campaign forces
them to deal with Russia. Militarily, the U.S. will now have to watch
for Russian strikes and their impact on the war. Diplomatically, the
coalition must give Russia a seat at the table.
U.S. officials continued to argue that Russia’s entry into the war will backfire,
potentially sucking the country into a quagmire. White House spokesman
Josh Earnest referred Wednesday to the Soviet Union’s eight-year war in
Afghanistan, also designed to bolster an ally.
“Russia will not succeed in imposing a military solution on Syria,” Earnest said.
But
Russia’s strikes against the rebels seeking Assad’s ouster was the
strongest reinforcement the beleaguered Syrian leader has seen in
months. In Putin, Assad has found a coalition partner at a point when he
appeared to be perilously close to losing key territory under his
control.
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Can Russian intervention save Assad? Or is it laying the groundwork for his eventual demise?
Experts
said that with Moscow backing Assad—and a Washington-led coalition
reluctant to confront the Russians—the Obama administration’s calls for
Assad to go, at least in the short term, are meaningless.
“The
obvious answer is it makes it impossible for the United States to decide
now that we want to remove Assad from power,” Christopher Harmer, an
analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, told The
Daily Beast. “You can’t have the Russians embedded with Syrians and
then attack the Assad regime. We can’t possibly risk an inadvertent
conflict with Russia.”
And yet, because of the strikes, Russia now
has a seat the negotiating table and potentially veto power over
whether Assad stays or goes.
“They could pick their own dictator,” one senior defense official told The Daily Beast.
Any
military cooperation between Russia and the U.S. also seemed in flux.
U.S. officials had said in recent days that the two countries would
begin to deconflict their military strikes, but those discussions still
hadn’t happened as of Wednesday afternoon, hours after the Russian
attack began. Secretary of State John Kerry appeared with his Russian
counterpart Wednesday even at the United Nations and said the two
countries recognized the urgency of such talks.
But Wednesday’s
strikes could have long-lasting implications. If Russian forces have
expanded their attacks to U.S. allies in Syria, “then any prospect there
might have been for U.S.-Russia cooperation is gone,” Steven Pifer, the
former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a top Russia adviser during the
Clinton administration, told The Daily Beast.
Russia’s entry into
the war was bold, dramatic—and seemingly out of a spy movie. U.S.
officials in Baghdad received a phone call Wednesday morning that a
Russian three-star general would be coming by with a message. At 9 a.m.
local time, he informed the embassy that Russian strikes would start
shortly, and the U.S. should stop its strikes and move its personnel
immediately. An hour late, the bombing campaign commenced.
Officially,
Russia said its eight airstrikes on Wednesday were aimed at ISIS
“terrorists,” as the defense ministry put it in a public statement. There were reports from the ground that at least 36 civilians had been killed.
While
Russia may have seized some immediate strategic advantage, the Putin
regime could still find itself in a quagmire like the White House is
predicting. U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that Russian ground
forces are now vulnerable to attack. What happens if some of the
hundreds of Russian troops stationed at their western Syria base are
killed by a car bomb or a ground assault?, the officials asked. How much
money is Russia willing to spend on behalf of Assad? And if they leave
abruptly, can Assad survive such an exit?
Pifer noted that public
opinion polls in Russia show a majority of its citizens are opposed to a
military intervention in Syria. The Russians “have put themselves at
something of a risk” by attacking now and putting their own troops in
harm’s way, he said.
U.S. defense officials insisted that Russia’s
intervention would have no bearing on their plans. American strikes
against ISIS continued “unimpeded,” Carter said.
But Carter also had no clear rebuttal to Russia’s previous assurances that it would limit its attacks to ISIS.
The
prospects for a major upheaval in the Syria conflict following Russia’s
entry has worried defense officials for the past two weeks. They’ve watched
as Russia sent military aircraft to their longtime base in western
Syria. As recently as yesterday, defense officials said four SU-34
aircraft, also known as Fullbacks, had arrived, bringing the total
number of aircraft in Syria to 32. That’s four times the number that the
U.S. has based at Incirlik, Turkey, the closest staging point to
targets in Syria.
What's more several of those jets—and many of the surface-to-air missiles imported by Russia—are built to take on foes like the United States, not ISIS.
And yet the U.S.-led effort suffered a number of setbacks. A year
into the fight, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the outgoing chairman of Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said the fight had become a stalemate, as strikes had
not substantially damaged ISIS. A cornerstone of its policy, training of
Syrian rebels to confront ISIS, struggled to find fighters and keep
equipment out of jihadist hands. Last week, the Pentagon announced that a
commander affiliated with U.S.-trained forces handed over six trucks and unlimited ammunition to Jabhat al Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate.
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