Thursday, October 01, 2015

Well isn't that special!


Not since WW II have the US and Russians bombed the same country. Unlike that time, just about everybody is having difficulty figuring out who we are bombing.
For the first time in 70 years, U.S. and Russian bombers are flying in the same skies, but it remains to be seen whether they are on the same side as they were in World War II.

While Moscow’s allies have flown Russian-made planes in more recent conflicts, from Vietnam to Iraq and Iran, the direct entry of the Kremlin’s air force into the messy Syrian civil war marks a new chapter in U.S.-Russian relations.

That chapter is starting with the two countries cooperating to de-conflict their airstrikes, but the rest of the story could go sour quickly given Moscow’s support for a repressive Syrian government that America says must go.

At a Pentagon briefing hours after the Russian bombing raids began, Defense Secretary Ash Carter was like a traffic cop whistling for cars to stop while motioning them forward.

“Russia states an intent to fight ISIL on the one hand, and to support the Bashar Assad regime on the other,” Carter said, using the U.S. acronym for the Islamic State.

“Fighting ISIL without pursuing a parallel political transition only risks escalating the civil war in Syria – and with it, the very extremism and instability that Moscow claims to be concerned about and aspire to fighting,” Carter said.

Claiming that there was “a logical contradiction in the Russian position,” Carter said it makes no sense for Moscow to go after the Islamic State while backing a regime that has killed tens of thousands of people, and one which large numbers of Syrians hate.

Two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin evoked the World War II Allied forces by urging “an anti-Hitler” coalition against the Islamic State, there were contradictory if not confusing behavior and statements from his countrymen in Moscow and Syria.

Maj. Gen. Igor Koneshenkov, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, said his country’s first raids in Syria were aimed at Islamic State militants.

“Today Russian aircraft carried out precise strikes against eight ISIL terror group targets on the territory of Syria,” he said. “About 20 sorties were flown.”

The Islamic State gives Washington and Moscow a common foe in Syria, but their interests diverge over President Bashar Assad.

Responding to the Islamic State’s social media prowess, the Defense Ministry even posted a video purporting to show bombs exploding in Syria. It said the raids had hit Islamic State command posts, communications centers, fuel depots and ammunition armories in what it described as “surgical strikes.”

But the view on the ground in Syria was peculiarly at odds with the Russian claims.
At least their PR and ours claim the same victims though the actual victims might beg to differ, if they could.

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