President Barack Obama lamented (on CBS Sixty Minutes) that poor Vladimir Putin was simply out of his league while the wiley community organizer from Chicago showed him a thing or two. According to Obama, his leadership reigns supreme.It's a symptom of chronic narcissism as a severe personality disorder, but what's new? Half of America loves him because he sees to it that they get free cheese and ObamaPhones. 60 million Americans are on food stamps, and both he and Hillary Clinton hope that they'll remember that when they vote.
Whatever Syrian-based force we had to fight ISIL, four or five guys at last count, that number is now zero after the Russians wiped them out.
Then there is the SECRET (but not so secret) anti-Assad Syrian force that the CIA trained up to take out the Syrian Govt. They had trained a few thousand, but the Russians have severely reduced those numbers as well, and they'll keep wiping them out until they don't exist. Naturally the Iranian Kuds force will move in and slaughter what's left.
Does anyone except me read history? I haven't heard a comparison to the Bay of Pigs from the mainstream media and I'm not holding my breath.
You can't tell the players without a program. The US Military trained 4 or 5 fighters to take on ISIL. The CIA trained a few thousand to take on Assad (unsupported by aircraft and vulnerable to the Russian attacks that wiped them out).
The US isn't in a position to save the CIA trained rebels as the Russians pummel them with air and artillery strikes and the Iranian infantry has at them. Obama really pulled Vladimir's pants down around his ankles, didn't he?
The Russians "know their targets, and they have a sophisticated capacity to understand the battlefield situation," said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who serves on the House Intelligence Committee and was careful not to confirm a classified program. "They are bombing in locations that are not connected to the Islamic State" group.
Meanwhile, Obama is preparing his 'victory over Putin in Syria' exhibit together for the monument that he is building for himself in Chicago. (Obama Presidential Library)
Will Barack risk World War III by establishing a no-fly zone over Sovereign Syrian Airspace? No. Not a snowball in hell's chance of that happening.
The circumstances will end up shoving another million military age males into Europe.
Putin has once again "won", or as the administration would prefer to spin it, "has hung himself."
Barack Obama dismantled the US Sixth Fleet (Mediterranean Area of Operations) not long after taking office. He has quietly re-established it and a carrier battle group (around the USS Eisenhower - CVN 69) left Norfolk on October 7 enroute the area off Israel, to show the flag and try to salvage Obama's blunders, which it can't.
Enter China
(IBD) Russian and Chinese military sources now confirm that Chinese warships are en route to the Middle East to get in on some of the action of humiliating the U.S.
In just a week and a half, Moscow has upended the dynamics of power in the Mideast by taking on the role that President Obama relinquished: acting like a superpower in a regional conflict that has implications extending far beyond the region.
Russian ruler Vladimir Putin launched airstrikes against rebels opposing the terrorist Assad regime in Syria, first with a modest force to gauge the U.S. response and perhaps pull out if threatened. Seeing no threat, Putin has been intensifying Russian operations, even sending in Spetsnaz special forces troops.
China's entry means two major powers are stepping in to do what the U.S. was unwilling to do against IS.
It's a lesson in how fast the tables can turn when America displays weakness — losing wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and proving to be ineffective against IS despite fighting it for a year and three months now.
Our commander-in-chief even admits that he has no strategy against the monstrous caliphate that his very own policies of weakness brought into being.
What is apparently happening now was inconceivable before Obama sent America spiraling into decline: our two Cold War adversaries uniting militarily in an effort that will ultimately give them dominance, at our expense, in the most strategically important part of the world, the oil-rich and politically fragile Middle East.
That is the price of having a weak and indecisive leader, and of a weak, soft, spoiled, ignorant electorate who returned him to office after four miserable years to continue his reign.