Russia and Syria
I am the last person to ever claim that Vladimir Putin is anything but a vicious dictator, who deserves to be put down any way possible, but that does not neutralize the fact that Russia has an urgent interest in seeing to it that no group of Islamic fanatics, like ISIS, takes control of Syria.
Here's a map of the northern Middle East and southern Russia. Please note that the distance between Syria and Russia is, at the narrowest point, only about 250 miles. That is a distance that could be covered in less than half an hour by a fighter jet, or less than four hours on a straight freeway drive, if a freeway existed there.
I ask anyone to consider what the United States would do if a genocidal Islamic state arose 250 miles into Mexico; which is to say, around Mazatlan. Do you think we would not be bombing the whole area into oblivion, regardless of the civilian "collateral damage?" After all, we killed a million civilians in Iraq just a few years ago, for nothing. And please consider this question in light of the fact that the United States has, for over a century, maintained vicious dictators throughout central and South America; dictators that have been every bit as brutal as any Islamic ruler, and that our country has done this in the face of far less threat than Russia faces from Islamic extremism. Many of these countries posed no danger to anyone except American corporations, before we destroyed their governments. This reached a height of abomination in the fifties, when the Eisenhower administration essentially turned foreign policy over to two brothers who were on the board of the United Fruit Company, and who used their positions to see to it that no Central American country ever acted in the interest of its own people, and during the Reagan administration, when the Republican President illegally financed an army of drug gangs to force a legitimately elected government from power; these monstrous interventions continue to produce disastrous effects for our own country today.
No matter how vicious Putin may be, the reality remains that Russia cannot tolerate a fanatical, genocidal government almost on their border. We would do well to keep that in mind as we see how Trump's current temper tantrum plays itself out.
Here's a map of the northern Middle East and southern Russia. Please note that the distance between Syria and Russia is, at the narrowest point, only about 250 miles. That is a distance that could be covered in less than half an hour by a fighter jet, or less than four hours on a straight freeway drive, if a freeway existed there.
I ask anyone to consider what the United States would do if a genocidal Islamic state arose 250 miles into Mexico; which is to say, around Mazatlan. Do you think we would not be bombing the whole area into oblivion, regardless of the civilian "collateral damage?" After all, we killed a million civilians in Iraq just a few years ago, for nothing. And please consider this question in light of the fact that the United States has, for over a century, maintained vicious dictators throughout central and South America; dictators that have been every bit as brutal as any Islamic ruler, and that our country has done this in the face of far less threat than Russia faces from Islamic extremism. Many of these countries posed no danger to anyone except American corporations, before we destroyed their governments. This reached a height of abomination in the fifties, when the Eisenhower administration essentially turned foreign policy over to two brothers who were on the board of the United Fruit Company, and who used their positions to see to it that no Central American country ever acted in the interest of its own people, and during the Reagan administration, when the Republican President illegally financed an army of drug gangs to force a legitimately elected government from power; these monstrous interventions continue to produce disastrous effects for our own country today.
No matter how vicious Putin may be, the reality remains that Russia cannot tolerate a fanatical, genocidal government almost on their border. We would do well to keep that in mind as we see how Trump's current temper tantrum plays itself out.
Comments
Russia has a border with North Korea. I don't see Russia trying to bomb Pyongyang.
But North Korea is atheist, and ISIS is Muslim.
2) "I ask anyone to consider what the United States would do if a genocidal Islamic state arose 250 miles into Mexico; which is to say, around Mazatlan"
There once was a genocidal state (not Islamic) less than 250 miles from the United States. The shortest distance between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic is 237 miles. The Dominican Republic committed genocide against ethnic Haitians in the Parsley Massacre.
The United States did bupkis.
But the Dominican Republic is mainly Christian, and the area that ISIS controls is largely Muslim.
3) The United States borders Mexico. Russia does not border Syria.
Russia doesn't even border a country that borders Syria.
The direct route from Russia to Syria goes through Turkey, which is a NATO ally. Russia has regularly violated Turkish airspace.
Does NATO have any right to violate Russian airspace if it's fighting terrorists? If not -- and an attack on any NATO member is an attack on all -- then Russia has no right to invade Turkish airspace.
But Turkey is mainly Muslim, so I guess it's okay if Russia invades Turkey.
You are a vile Turk-hating weasel.
From 2014:
For starters, Andriy Parubiy, the new secretary of Ukraine’s security council, was a co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), otherwise known as Svoboda. And his deputy, Dmytro Yarosh, is the leader of a party called the Right Sector which, according to historian Timothy Stanley, “flies the old flag of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators at its rallies.”
....
The Svoboda party has tapped into Nazi symbolism including the “wolf’s angel“ rune, which resembles a swastika and was worn by members of the Waffen-SS, a panzer division that was declared a criminal organization at Nuremberg. A report from Tel-Aviv University describes the Svoboda party as “an extremist, right-wing, nationalist organization which emphasizes its identification with the ideology of German National Socialism.”
....
Last week Per Anders Rudling from Lund University in Sweden, an expert on Ukrainian extremists, told Britain’s Channel 4 News: “A neo-fascist party like Svoboda getting the deputy prime minister position is news in its own right.” Well, except in the U.S.
So - if Russia invading Syria is good, why is Russia invading Neo-Naziland bad?
Now, as for you, Abie: Once again, like Meyerim and every apologist for the evil Islamist governments in the Middle East and Africa (which is what you really are,) you deliberately distort what I had to say, in order to create a straw man that you can attack. I never said any particular thing Russia was doing in Syria was acceptable. I made it clear that I was objecting to the simplistic, self-absorbed account of world events that is all we get offered in the United States. I do not have to be either a supporter or enemy of Putin to recognize that the existence of an ISIS governed state in its region represents an existential threat to Russia far beyond that posed by the pathetic neo-Nazi political parties in Eastern Europe. Too bad you cannot see current events through anything but your thick ideological lenses.
I think we need to get rid of both ISIS and Nazi-fascist states.
Here's something from YNet News.
Ukraine’s new heroes: Anti-Semites and murderers of Jews
Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Nazis, Symon Petliura is linked to the massacre of as many as 100,000 Jews, and Ivan Rohach was the editor of an anti-Semitic newspaper—yet the three of them are commemorated in Ukraine’s city squares and streets; ‘this is morally unacceptable,’ a local Jewish leader says, accusing the government of rewriting history and denying the Holocaust.
"It’s no wonder Ukraine’s Jews are angry and troubled, living in a country where anti-Semitic murderers are backed by the authorities and spraying hate graffiti is routine. During Catholic Christmas, for example, hate graffiti were sprayed in three Jewish sites—the gates of the Holocaust museum in Odessa, a Jewish cultural center and an inactive synagogue in the city."
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The Ukrainian government is supporting Jew-killers.
Ukraine, which is next door to Russia, has 45 million people.
ISIS is an existential threat to Russia. Nazi-loving Ukraine is an even bigger one.