If the US-led CDO were really committed to fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, they would be working side by side with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), not bombing it or trying to stall it.
And they would be actively trying to shut down the key Turkey-Syria crossroads – the Jarablus corridor which is in fact a 24/7 Jihadi Highway.
Unless Erdogan has lost his mind, Washington is behind the shootdown, and the reason is Washington’s desperation to decode the new Russian technology that gives Russian forces total control over a battlefield, whether on land, sea, or air.
Russia’s aerial blitzkrieg against anti-government mercenaries in Syria – whether they go by the name of IS, FSA, al Nusra, Islamic Front, or some other cover name – has, since September 30, wiped out thousands of foreign-backed insurgents. Together with Syrian Arab Army ground advances, this Russian air campaign is liquidating assets that the US and its allies have invested billions of dollars in for regime change in Damascus.
Here’s Erdogan’s warped reasoning in a nutshell. The Paris tragedy was a huge setback. France started discussing close military collaboration not within NATO, but with Russia. Washington’s unstated aim was always to get NATO inside Syria. By having Turkey/NATO — clumsily, inside Syrian territory — attacking Russia, and provoking a harsh Russian response, Erdogan thought he could seduce NATO into Syria, under the pretext (Article 5) of defending Turkey.
Who is the one “breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various “western alliance” governments, and why is it that these governments have allowed said middleman to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?”
The escalation is “long feared” not because the Turkish government actually fears that Russian warplanes crossing their border pose a threat to it or its people, but because Russia has ended NATO’s proxy war, a proxy war spearheaded in part by Turkey itself, amid Russia’s joint military operations with Syria against the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) and supporting terrorist factions.
Turkey has maintained a buffer zone five miles inside Syria since June 2012, when a Syrian air defense missile shot down a Turkish fighter plane that had strayed into Syrian airspace. Under revised rules of engagement put in effect then, the Turkish air force would evaluate any target coming within five miles of the Turkish border as an enemy and act accordingly.
The downing of the Russian Su-24 fighter fits perfectly with the way in which the Turkish government has been ratcheting up tensions on the border, using its jihadi allies to seize Syrian territory, and trying to incite a violent reaction that will force greater NATO or US involvement. I seriously doubt that Putin is gullible enough to take the bait and overreact to this obvious and pathetic provocation in Ankara. He will exact his pound of flesh at some other time, a time of his own choosing.
The Turks have shot down a Russian jet that may (or may not) have been skirting into Turkish territory at the time. This marks the first time since the start of the Cold War that nuclear-armed NATO has committed an act of war against another nuclear-armed state. It’s a well-known and well-rehearsed scenario for a possible global conflagration.
Turkey’s provocative action puts Russia one step away from full-scale war with NATO
Once again in the history of American intervention we have the spectacle of the creators being threatened by their own creation. It’s not that long ago that the mujahideen, who benefited from American financial and military support during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, later turned on the West in the form of Al-Qa‘ida. Yesterday’s “freedom fighters” have become today’s “terrorists.”
Why does America’s anti-Russia military club NATO still exist, after the Soviet Union’s equivalent Warsaw Pact disbanded in 1991 when the Soviet Union and its communism voluntarily ended?
NATO is nothing but America’s anti-Russia military club, against Russia and against any nation (such as Iraq, or Libya, or Syria) that supports Russia.
