This is what happens when you eschew "diplomacy" and fail to "have a dialogue" and "open the lines of communication" - the other side simply gives you an effective ultimatum. The enemy having vastly superior air and ground forces in-theater also doesn't help.
I'm surprised Putin didn't order us to get out of Syria altogether:
As Russia and the United States conduct separate bombing campaigns in Syria....
i.e. As Russia conducts a bombing campaign in Syria and the United States pretends to.
....the two countries are set to renew talks to avoid accidents in contested air space, a U.S. official said.
You can't renew something that you never started in the first place.
The [Obam]agon expressed alarm this week after Russia failed to quickly answer proposals made during initial talks, even as it launched cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea and repeatedly violated Turkish air space.
Which is providing Czar Vlad with an opportunity to possibly split Turkey off from NATO (see below)
But [Obam]agon press secretary Peter Cook said Moscow had now filed an appropriate response, reported news service AFP.
i.e. the U.S. no-fly zone ultimatum.
"The [Commissariat] of Defense has received a formal response from the Russian ministry of defense regarding DoD's proposal to ensure safe air operations over Syria," Cook said.
"Department leaders are reviewing the Russian response and talks are likely to take place as soon as this weekend."
i.e. "Sir, yes, sir!"
This no-fly zone we can't violate upon penalty of war isn't anything new, of course, but more of a formalization of what Putin imposed upon us in Syria by his actions over the past three weeks. These retroactive words are just a description of what already is.
When you look back on the history of U.S. foreign policy over the past twenty years, and you behold a humiliating disaster of this magnitude, you know that there's one other ingredient that just has to be in the mix somewhere.
And sure enough, Mr. Peanut was involved:
Claiming that he knows Russian President Vladimir Putin "fairly well" because they once discussed their "common interest in fly fishing"....
Looks like his brain cancer is getting worse.
....former President Jimmy Carter took the initiative to provide maps of Islamic State positions in Syria to the Russian embassy in Washington — a move at odds with the Obama administration, the Washington Free Beacon reports.
Not really. Now if Obama was serious about crushing the Islamic State, that might have been a different story.
"I sent [Putin] a message Thursday and asked him if he wanted a copy of our map so he could bomb accurately in Syria, and then on Friday, the Russian embassy in Atlanta — I mean in Washington....
This is sad. Why do they still let this obviously sick and deteriorating man out in public? At least when President Reagan's Altzheimers came on, he wrote his farewell letter and then withdrew from public life. That JC guy's grey matter is literally being consumed and he's still trying to salvage his presidential reputation.
....called down and told me they would like very much to have the map," Carter said at his Sunday school class in Georgia, according to a video of his remarks first aired on NBC News.
"So in the future, if Russia doesn't bomb the right places, you'll know it's not Putin's fault but it's my fault," he added.
And of what would that map be? Greater Plains and vicinity? Just exactly how would the Carter Center be in possession of up-to-date intelligence on the detailed location of ISIS positions and installations? I can't imagine that the Russians accepted the map for any other reason than to heap even more global humiliation upon The One for the utter shambles he's made of U.S. Middle East foreign policy that an elderly progenitor is (or thinks he is) feeding Czar Vlad Syria intel that may actually be the alternate routes to navigate around Atlanta rush hour traffic.
And before I forget, remember a week and a half back when the Turks shot down a MiG-29 that was the latest of a stream of Russian violations of Turkish airspace? It looked like this war was rapidly escalating into one between Russia and NATO, and therefore the U.S. But Vlad seems to have taken this new "jaw-jaw" gimmick to heart.
There's more than one way to break up NATO than by force of arms. If Putin succeeds in talking Turkey out of NATO - and remember that the Turks are the second-largest contributor of military resources to the Atlantic Alliance after the U.S. - that would be a comprehensively serious blow to both NATO and to any hope of any reassertion of American influence in the Middle East.
By the time Putin is finished, he may have carried out his own version of the Middle East liberation clean sweep we had a chance to achieve over a decade ago, and which Barack Obama has left us no means, diplomatic, military, or otherwise, of reversing it.
There's just nothing that "Smart Power" cannot accomplish, is there?
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