Russians Arming Fighters In Syria With Air-To-Air Missiles

by JASmius



The Turks shooting down Russian warplanes, the Obama Regime so bent on its "Assad must go!" fetish that it is now clandestinely "targeting" them as well, and now this:

Russian Su-34 Fencer fighter-bombers flew in Syria for the first time with air-to-air missiles for self-defense earlier this week, a Russian air force official told Russian news agencies, more than a week after a Turkish F-16 Falcon shot down a Russian jet.

Igor Klimov, the official, said the air-to-air missiles were capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to sixty kilometres (37.28 miles).

In a move raising the potential threat of a Russia-NATO conflict, Russia said it will deploy long-range air defense missiles to its base in Syria and destroy any target that may threaten its warplanes following the downing of a Russian military jet by Turkey.

The incident was the [second] time in half a century that a NATO member shot down a Russian plane. If Russia responds by downing a Turkish plane, NATO member Turkey could proclaim itself under attack and ask the alliance for military assistance.

And "the alliance" - aka the United States, aka Barack Obama - would refuse, throw the Turks under the bus, Turkey would angrily quit NATO, which would be exposed as the house-of-cards-paper-tiger that it is and quickly collapse.  And then Vladimir Putin could hang his "mission accomplished" banner in the Kremlin.

But suppose Russia responds by downing an American plane?  That will be a stickier wicket for The One.  The American people would presumably demand that he take some kind of action in response; if he didn't, as would be his reflexively appeasenik instinct and preference, that and not his Iran nuclear sellout would become his foreign policy "legacy," something it's doubtful his ego could withstand.  Which means if he did take some kind of retaliatory action, it would be out of personal butt-hurtedness and not American national security interests, the latter of which, ironically, would argue for not retaliating because the incident would have happened as a result of a foreign policy that ran counter to American national security interests in the first place.

All of which is a circuitously round-about way of saying that the Russians can't entirely be blamed for preparing to defend their air assets from airborne attack.  They could, of course, simply stop violating Turkish airspace, but the Turks are proving quite capable of defending that, and that in turn does little or nothing to explain why American warplanes are being sent to the Syrian-Turkish frontier to "target" Russian aircraft.

In the backdrop of the history of the past century, this is just the sort of situation out of which major wars erupt.  Not a deliberate, mano-e-mano march toward and escalation to armed conflict, but weakness and confusion stirring the metaphorical tinder box, just waiting for a spark.

Toss in cosmic ego to the mix and....well, we are in terrible, terrible danger.

You know that adage that "elections have consequences"?  This is what that means.



Pity it's too late now, huh?