thebigp

Putin In Syria--47h., b5
Even now with the Russians on the verge of combat operations in Syria, the White House still says it believes that they're there to fight ISIS. John Kerry says that his Russian counterpart told him that the Russians are "only interested in fighting" the Islamic State. Other administration officials hold out hope for a grand U.S.-Russia coalition against ISIS. But that's nonsense: Vladimir Putin landed troops in order to protect his investment in Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. Senators were dismayed to learn from General Lloyd Austin's testimony on Capitol Hill last week that for all the administration's talk of arming Syrian rebels, there are only four or five trained by the United States now engaged in the fight against ISIS The really shocking thing is that the White House managed to recruit anyone at all when it conditioned assistance on signing a document stating that their U.S.-supplied arms would not be used against Assad and his allies.
It was when Obama balked at arming and funding moderate rebel units that extremist groups like ISIS filled the void. And when Obama tilted towards Iran and its allies around the region—e.g., providing air support for the operations of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) expeditionary unit, led by Qassem Suleimani, in Tikrit, flying drones on behalf of the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese Armed Forces, promising Tehran that he would respect Iranian interests in Syria—the ranks of the region-wide Sunni r*******n swelled. The equation is straightforward: To defeat ISIS, first you have to topple Assad and ruin Iran's position in Syria.
'I'd like to dispose of the Syrian dictator as much as the next guy, Obama can say—but we're going to have to go through the Russians first, and they don't see it that way. Setting up a no-fly zone was always not going to be tricky , he can argue, but with Russian planes now in the area, we're not going to do stupid stuff and risk an incident that could lead to a Third World War.
The Russian presence has limited Israel's ability to interdict Iranian arms shipments from Syria destined for Hezbollah.
He simply sees them as instruments to get what he wants out of Syria: to project power and collect rent from everyone, from Iran as well as Israel. Obama's nuclear deal with Iran means that Jerusalem must carry out a scrupulous campaign of deterrence against Iranian q assets in its neighborhood. Both Hezbollah and the IRGC have to be kept on a tight leash.
For 70 years. the thrust of American foreign policy in the Middle East was to keep Moscow out—first as a Cold War adversary and later as a spoiler that profits from destabilizing the status quo. It was in this context that Israel clinched its place as an American ally of the first rank.
But what more could Israel ask for than in a relatively reliable friend—a superpower that shared its values and was home to as many Jews as there were in Israel? And now the Obama White House, through a combination of incompetence and hubris, is undoing all of that, restricting Israel's room to maneuver, and bringing the threat of war ever closer.
source weekly standard (9/28/2015), lee smith