Define "disaster".
Originally Posted by timpage
Are you fucking kidding me? Every day under this Capitulationist-in-Chief is a disaster in the making! How bad does it need to get for you to acknowledge that?
Syria’s Radiating Danger
Russia’s incursions into Turkey risk tension with NATO.
Oct. 6, 2015 7:14 p.m. ET
Another day, another Mideast surprise for the Obama Administration. Russian warplanes twice violated Turkish—meaning NATO—airspace over the weekend, a provocation that “does not look like an accident,” according to NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg. What will the U.S. do if Russia shoots down a Turkish jet, thereby testing NATO’s Article 5 provision that an attack on one Alliance member is an attack on all of them?
This follows Russia’s bombing of U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria, which in turn comes on the heels of an intelligence-sharing deal between Moscow, Tehran, Damascus and Baghdad. Immediately preceding that was news that the U.S. training of Syrian rebels has been a $500 million debacle, which coincided with news the Pentagon’s Inspector General had opened an investigation into allegations that someone has been air-brushing intelligence assessments of the campaign against Islamic State.
That’s merely the past two weeks. At this rate don’t be surprised if Moscow locks a missile radar on a U.S. fighter, or shoots down an American drone.
When an American President indicates he’d rather accept humiliation than responsibility, you can be sure he’s going to be humiliated some more.
None of this was the Mideast painted earlier by Mr. Obama: al Qaeda was on a path to defeat, Bashar Assad’s days “are numbered,” and Syria had been stripped of its chemical arsenal. The President has become an oracle in reverse: Every forecast about the Middle East must be treated as the opposite of what is likely to happen.
Also now exposed as false is the Administration’s hope that the Iran deal would open avenues of regional cooperation with the ayatollahs. Instead, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has read the agreement as capitulation and is now doubling down on his Syria bets. Moscow and Tehran, now openly coordinating their joint intervention on behalf of Mr. Assad, are marching through the open door of U.S. abdication.
The danger is that every unanswered incursion and provocation tempts the Moscow-Tehran-Damascus axis to further test U.S. limits. What happens when Bashar Assad resumes using sarin gas against his own people, using Russian air power as protection against potential reprisals while blaming the attacks on ISIS?
It’s worth noting that Russian air-space incursions happened over the Turkish border province of Hatay, which has a large Alawite population and which the Assad regime has never recognized as part of Turkey. As former U.S ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey noted Tuesday, the Russian incursions can be read as a warning to Ankara not to meddle in Syria—or that the Russian military is ignorant of the sensitivity of the province and is bumbling into danger. Either way, the chances of a fateful miscalculation are growing.
It would be nice to think that Susan Rice and her team at the U.S. National Security Council are doing some kind of serious contingency planning in the event Moscow decides to pick a bigger fight or truly blunders. Mr. Obama has made it clear he won’t get drawn into a proxy war in Syria, which may be read as the final betrayal of the U.S.-supported forces now being bombed by Russia. Sounding similarly hollow are the Administration’s promises that it will continue to oppose Iran’s regional bids despite the nuclear deal.
In 1947, as Britain’s status as a global power was coming to an end, then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton warned that his government was “drifting in a state of semi-animation, toward the rapids.” For the Obama Presidency, the rapids are in earshot.
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