Two good pieces on where things currently stand in Syria: a straight reportage article in the UK Telegraph, the headline of which is "Russia warns of 'new world war starting in Syria," and a longer analysis piece by Kathy Gilsinan at The Atlantic that includes the transcript of her interview with Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The gist of both is that Russia and post-America have very different outcomes in mind for the Syrian civil war. Russia's focus is on seeing that the Assad regime survives and that the Russia-Syria-Iran axis prevails. Post-America's priority is defeating ISIS (although you'd never be able to tell it from the tepid strategy imposed on those doing the executing by the Most Equal Comrade and his nomenklatura.)
Some reverberations of the basic Russia-post-America impasse include the fact that a group of Sunni Arab nations, most vocally represented by Saudi Arabia, are furious that Iran's influence is eclipsing theirs in the region, and Iran's contempt for, and delight in humiliating at every opportunity, post-America.
Granted, Saudi Arabia is no one's idea of a human-rights paradise, but its strategic interests have a lot more in common with the West's than those of any other players in this. The Saudis have even been engaged in back-channel talks with Israel about what to do about Iran's inevitable acquisition of a nuclear arsenal.
This situation is perhaps the best example available of the Most Equal Comrade's ruinously rudderless foreign policy. In seven years we've gone from "Assad is a force for stability" to "Assad must go" to "Maybe he can be a partner at the peace-talks table." Meanwhile, post-America has legitimized - and bolstered financially - its mortal enemy, one of Earth's most evil regimes, Iran. It has also offered its most formidable adversary, Russia, "reset" and "increased flexibility."
And now, let us look to the possibilities for this nation's Middle East policies in the aftermath of the Most Equal Comrade's rule. Pause to contemplate how Bernie Sanders or Hillionaire would handle the current dynamics. Or how about Squirrel-Hair, who veers from "let Russia fight ISIS" (which, as the linked articles make clear, is not happening) to "bomb the s--- out of them and take their oil."
Is not one criterion for selecting our next commander-in-chief the provision of an alternative to such clown shows?
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