US shoots down Syrian Jet, situation remains close to fucked

[Raj Ahten]

So with very little fan fare or attention the US shot down a Syrian government jet after Assad's forces got too close to US proxies, oh I mean the Syrian Democratic Forces. So now Russia is saying they will shoot down any coalition aircraft that cross their line in the sand. What a clusterfuck. Why giving your military a blank check to do whatever it wants is stupid. The shoot down occurred on Sunday and was buried on the backpage. Why it doesn't rate as important news is beyond me.

Report from the Guardian.

Russia has said it will target any plane from the US-led coalition flying west of the Euphrates river in Syria after the US military shot down a Syrian air force jet on Sunday.

Russia’s defence ministry said the US had given it no warning, and that as a consequence it was also suspending coordination over “deconfliction zones” that were created to prevent incidents involving US and Russian jets engaged in operations in Syria.

According to the Pentagon the Syrian jet in question had dropped bombs near US partner forces involved in the fight to wrest Raqqa from Islamic State (Isis) control. It was the first such US attack on a Syrian air force plane since Syria’s civil war began six years ago.

In Russia’s first response to the incident early on Monday, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said: “This strike has to be seen as a continuation of America’s line to disregard the norms of international law.

“What is this if not an act of aggression? It is, if you like, help to those terrorists that the US is fighting against, declaring they are carrying out an anti-terrorism policy.”

The Russian response increases the risk of an inadvertent air fight breaking out between US and Russian warplanes in the skies above Syria.

The US military confirmed that a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet had shot down a Syrian SU-22 on Sunday. The US said the Syrian jet had dropped bombs near Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters who are aligned with US forces in the fight against Isis. Damascus said its plane had been on anti-Isis mission.

Col John Thomas, a spokesman for US Central Command, said there were no US forces in the immediate vicinity of the Syrian attack but that the SDF was under threat for more than two hours.

The growing risk of a direct confrontation between the US and Russia follows a decision by Donald Trump to grant his military chiefs untrammelled control of US military strategy in Syria.

Tensions have also been bubbling between Washington and Moscow over efforts to dislodge Isis from its Raqqa stronghold.

Russia, a staunch supporter of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has been pressing the US to make the removal of Isis a joint land and air operation, but discussions over Syria’s long-term political future appear to have ground to a halt, leaving the US military to operate in a political vacuum.

The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters working alongside western special forces, said it would take action to defend itself from Syrian warplanes if attacks continued.


The Trump administration has promised to improve arms supplies to the SDF after it concluded that it was the force most capable of freeing Raqqa from Isis.

In a sign of how complex the Syrian peace process has become, Russian-sponsored peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, are scheduled to resume on the same day – 10 July – as talks convened by the UN in Geneva.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, announced the date on Monday in the knowledge that it would coincide with the UN schedule. He also said that the UN’s Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, would take part.

A spokesman for de Mistura said “the subject is currently being discussed”.

[K. A. Pital]

I also find this underrated news. The protocols were meant to prevent accidentally starting a bigger shootout in the Middle East (or potentially turning this into a global clusterfuck). Now they've been abandoned, again.

[Simon_Jester]

I am looking forward to finding out what the White House will have to say about all this...

[Thanas]

I am looking forward to finding out what the White House will have to say about all this...

"See? This totally proves the Prez is not in cahoots with Putin. And this is why Mueller should be fired" - probably.

[Raw Shark]

This is not well. The phrase "fuckity-fucked" could be tossed around.

[Simon_Jester]

I am looking forward to finding out what the White House will have to say about all this...

"See? This totally proves the Prez is not in cahoots with Putin. And this is why Mueller should be fired" - probably.

Yeah, an actual policy position would be too much to hope for, even a stupid position.

[The Romulan Republic]

Since I've so often been accused of alarmism with regard to Syria and Russia, I'll ask the board members who are more knowledgeable about Russia and military affairs: on a scale of "Rainbows and Kittens" to "We're all going to die horribly", where are we right now?

I am looking forward to finding out what the White House will have to say about all this...

"See? This totally proves the Prez is not in cahoots with Putin. And this is why Mueller should be fired" - probably.

Its horrible that the best case scenario for this is probably "They're just posturing to distract people from the investigation".

Oh, and remember all those people (including some on this board) saying that Trump would be better than Clinton, because Clinton would start World War III by attacking Syria?

How's that working out for y'all?

[Flagg]

Swell.

[Joun_Lord]

Oh, and remember all those people (including some on this board) saying that Trump would be better than Clinton, because Clinton would start World War III by attacking Syria?

Wait a minute, I thought that one of the anti-Hillary talking points was that she WOULDN'T attack Syria, that like Obama she's put a bunch of lines in the sand and keep backing off when Putin crossed them?

Anyway, shit like this is why I'd prefer NAPOTATO forces and the US in particular would try to open more dialogue with Russia and Iran. I don't like the fact we got involved in the first place but not that we stuck our dicks in that hot dog down a hallway sized clusterfuck we should do the responsible thing and try to minimize suffering.

Of course this is whole mess is the fault of assholes like Trump and Putin and Obama and Assad, responsible is not part of their vocabulary. We got in the mess because of chest thumping stupidity by Obama against Putin and will stay in the mess because Trump is even more of an idiot.

[Raw Shark]

Well, to be fair, we haven't actually put boots on the ground in Syria yet. Six months and going.

[Ace Pace]

Well, to be fair, we haven't actually put boots on the ground in Syria yet. Six months and going.

You were saying (NYT)?

Small amount of forces are classic tripwires of "oh noes, they stubbed their toe, we must enter!"

Airspace and terrain and complicated there.

[Raw Shark]

Well, to be fair, we haven't actually put boots on the ground in Syria yet. Six months and going.

You were saying (NYT)?

Small amount of forces are classic tripwires of "oh noes, they stubbed their toe, we must enter!"

Airspace and terrain and complicated there.

A'ight, this is fucked.

[The Romulan Republic]

Oh, and remember all those people (including some on this board) saying that Trump would be better than Clinton, because Clinton would start World War III by attacking Syria?

Wait a minute, I thought that one of the anti-Hillary talking points was that she WOULDN'T attack Syria, that like Obama she's put a bunch of lines in the sand and keep backing off when Putin crossed them?

Probably. The Trumper crowd's rhetoric is highly inconsistent at times. But both sides used "The other candidate is more likely to start a major war" as a point against them, at times.

Though I saw the "Trump won't star WWIII like Clinton would" line coming more from "Left-wing" people who hated Clinton and wanted an excuse not to support her, I think.

Anyway, shit like this is why I'd prefer NAPOTATO forces and the US in particular would try to open more dialogue with Russia and Iran. I don't like the fact we got involved in the first place but not that we stuck our dicks in that hot dog down a hallway sized clusterfuck we should do the responsible thing and try to minimize suffering.

I'm not against any intervention in the region automatically, and I'd love to see Assad removed in theory, but in practice, yeah, attacking Syria isn't worth the risk. And any solution that doesn't carry a serious risk of World War III likely involves negotiating and compromising with Russia, yes.

Of course this is whole mess is the fault of assholes like Trump and Putin and Obama and Assad, responsible is not part of their vocabulary. We got in the mess because of chest thumping stupidity by Obama against Putin and will stay in the mess because Trump is even more of an idiot.

I don't think you can say Obama caused it. As you yourself noted, a lot of people had a hand in causing it, to varying degrees, and I could add quite a few more to your list. The fact that Assad is a monster is near the top of my list.

I do think that Obama made a mistake by threatening military action over chemical weapons, and by backing the rebels, but not enough to actually accomplish much except prolong the conflict. I'm not saying he should have gone all in either, but don't make threats you clearly aren't prepared to act on, and don't half-ass a war. Either commit to doing what you need to to win, or don't start.

[Joun_Lord]

Probably. The Trumper crowd's rhetoric is highly inconsistent at times. But both sides used "The other candidate is more likely to start a major war" as a point against them, at times.

Though I saw the "Trump won't star WWIII like Clinton would" line coming more from "Left-wing" people who hated Clinton and wanted an excuse not to support her, I think.

Yeah thats true, with the say anything to win approach of the Trumpsters is hard to keep all the bullshit straight.

I'm not against any intervention in the region automatically, and I'd love to see Assad removed in theory, but in practice, yeah, attacking Syria isn't worth the risk. And any solution that doesn't carry a serious risk of World War III likely involves negotiating and compromising with Russia, yes.

I'm not against intervention either but I am against the US, or any country, acting like world police. The humans costs of countries like the US, Soviet Russia, not as Soviet Russia, the UK, France, and others sticking their collective cocks into other countries for their own good or naked ambition and completely cocking it up is so ridiculously high (both for the invader and the invadee) but even leaving that aside I don't think countries should have the right to arbitrarily violate other countries just because they can even if the cause is just. If there was an intervention in Syria it should be done by the international community like the UN.

Assad is a very bad man that should not be in power. But the US and NATO should not be removing him from power unless its part of a global collective effort where they are comtributing the same as everyone else.

And yes I know I can be accused of advocating a do nothing policy that perpetuates further human suffering as my advocacy for the UN to get off its ass is ludicrous considering the UN can't and won't do shit. However its not like the interventions, even ones that could be called successful if any exist, are exactly blood free. Quite often ones like Syria or Iraq create probably far more violence and death then doing nothing.

Let people like Assad, Saddam, and Gaddafi stay in power and they are going to kill people, try to remove them from power is going to kill alot of people. There is no real winning answer.

I don't think you can say Obama caused it. As you yourself noted, a lot of people had a hand in causing it, to varying degrees, and I could add quite a few more to your list. The fact that Assad is a monster is near the top of my list.

I do think that Obama made a mistake by threatening military action over chemical weapons, and by backing the rebels, but not enough to actually accomplish much except prolong the conflict. I'm not saying he should have gone all in either, but don't make threats you clearly aren't prepared to act on, and don't half-ass a war. Either commit to doing what you need to to win, or don't start.

Of courser Obama didn't cause it, I'm sure Hillary was the (wo)man behind the curtain pulling the strings!! Not but seriously, its partially Obamas fault but it was most certainly a group effort even just in the US government. The Syria situation was from its onset not Obamas fault, it was an internal matter created by (probably) internal and regional forces. It became Obamas fault when Obama, Clinton, Susan Rice and others made the decision to arm rebels, to throw even more fuel on the fire, to make Syria America's problem.

Assad is a monster but not a beast to be slain by the US anymore then Saddam or Gaddafi was. We should not have committed to stopping him in the first place by proxy or by force. And its extremely fucked up to say but Syria was probably better overall when Assad was left alone just like Iraq was better overall under Saddam. Not better for everyone of course, they are considered monsters for a reason. But one has to wonder if removing the monsters to alleviate the suffering of a few is worth the suffering of so many others. Emotionally one would say yes, the comfort of some should not be bought with the suffering of others. But logically one might come to the conclusion that one should aim for the path of least harm, that making all suffer because a few were suffering seems ill advised.

its a quagmire of a mess to deal with, a shitfest any way it goes.

Me personally I'd say removing Saddam was a good thing because of how bad a shitbag he was, because of how he brutalized his people, the Kurds, and his neighbors. But thats emotional, thats not based on logic. The state of Iraq now I'm sure has many a people thinking leaving him in power was the more humane choice.

Again, a quagmire. Thus one of the reasons I think any efforts should be done by the collective international community. Maybe with all the worlds resources in manpower and intelligence, all the wisdom and other fantastical bullshit that might exist alongside rainbows, unicorns, and Denmark we could come to some sort of better answer to countries run by monsters then the American answer of flopping around flinging shit everywhere and the shit is bombs.

[Raj Ahten]

The US has been building up forces inside Syria for awhile now. Lots of special forces types as well as marine artillery units and other regulars. This has all happened with no public debate. If anything most people in power probably want more troops not less. US military dick swinging with no thought for actual strategy or long term consequences has been in vogue on a bipartisan basis for several decades now. I bet you no one has any real idea of what happens to our troops and proxy army after ISIS is "defeated." I imagine no one really knows what that looks like either. Do we go after al nursa front next? Overthrow Assad? Attack Iran? Abandon the area as fast as possible? I'm sure there are advocates for all of the above and none of them have really considered the outcomes or the assumptions behind their thinking. And that no one seems to give a flying fuck about regional war or even nuclear armed great powers Waring implications of it all is beyond troubling. No one can really seem to understand what a core interest is and what might be worth fighting for or not.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is that ISIL is so obviously terrible that it's almost impossible for people with that simplified chest-thumping concept of strategy that seems to take over politicians brains to say "Let's stay out of there instead of fighting ISIL."

Oh, and remember all those people (including some on this board) saying that Trump would be better than Clinton, because Clinton would start World War III by attacking Syria?

Wait a minute, I thought that one of the anti-Hillary talking points was that she WOULDN'T attack Syria, that like Obama she's put a bunch of lines in the sand and keep backing off when Putin crossed them?

The anti-Hillary talking points were both that she would start World War III by attacking Syria (because she's a hawk), and that she wouldn't*. The Republican Party's "to hell with Hillary" machine has been locked permanently in the 'on' position for about 25 years now, so no petty nonsense about internal consistency is going to stop it now.
______________

*(because she lacks guts, as Benghazi apparently proves, due to her not being able to step into a nearby phone both and jump out as Iron Secretary of State and personally fly across the world, in order to save a small group of embattled Americans, in the middle of a massive riot she didn't know about until it happened).

[Raj Ahten]

The problem is that ISIL is so obviously terrible that it's almost impossible for people with that simplified chest-thumping concept of strategy that seems to take over politicians brains to say "Let's stay out of there instead of fighting ISIL."
.

True. Our entire strategy in the war on terror has never gotten beyond the point of killing terrorists no matter the cost. Hardly a winning concept. Jihadist Ideology hasn't gone away by bombing it. In fact this approach has led to regional chaos and deaths on a massive scale with no end in sight. The alternative is to actually ask questions about our actions and alliances in the middle east and elsewhere and that in turn might mean changing our behavior. Bombing from afar and proxy wars are politically easy so that's what gets done.

[Flagg]

Yeah, people who do models that have predicted things like the outcome of the Iraq war long before they came to pass are saying the way to stop ISIS is to stop fighting them. Which makes sense to anyone who isn't in camouflage.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I'm not sure that would work on ISIL specifically, simply because at this point they're an army and not just an insurgency. With the Iraqi guerillas of 2004 it's not really clear if anything particularly bad in the long run would have resulted from just letting them win, compared to what wound up happening anyway.

But if people stop fighting ISIL, ISIL will do everything in its power to subjugate a larger area and impose a deeply obnoxious fundamentalist regime. We know this because that's what ISIL was doing before opposition to it became entrenched.

It's like, ceasing to fight Napoleon or Alexander the Great would not have resulted in them conquering less territory. Quite the opposite, I suspect. Because those were ambitious people at the heads of armies who wanted to dominate large amounts of land, NOT just insurgencies trying to drive a specific enemy out of a specific territory.

[The Romulan Republic]

Quite.

People need to recall that when we started fighting Daesh, they were on the cusp of overrunning Iraq (along with a large part of Syria) entirely, and had basically created a terrorist nation-state (albeit one we rightly refuse to recognize), in addition to committing genocide.

They are also openly hostile to... well, pretty much everyone that isn't them, and their actions have spilled over in very significant ways into other countries, both in terms of worsening the refugee crisis and in terms of them directly launching and inciting attacks that have killed hundreds of people. Some of the most seriously affected countries are American allies.

Had we not fought them when we did, I dare say we might have had to when they finished conquering Iraq and invaded Turkey, or Israel, or Saudi Arabia.

There is the risk that fighting them will feed into the cycle of Islamphobia vs. hatred of the West that they rely on to recruit. I don't know an easy solution to that, other than to become much, much better at countering their propaganda and building strong relations with Muslim communities at home and abroad.

But I have a hard time regarding the war against Daesh as anything other than a Just War.

However, its really neither hear nor their as far as shooting down Assad's planes is concerned. In fact, doing that will likely actively hamper efforts against Daesh, in my non-military expert opinion, because it means our planes in Syria will potentially be targeted by Russia and Assad in turn.

[Raw Shark]

Had we not fought them when we did, I dare say we might have had to when they finished conquering Iraq and invaded Turkey, or Israel.

Fuck Turkey, Israel, and especially the Iraquis (nothing personal, just in the political sense). We need to stop trying to be the world's cop and quit the foreign adventures. For all the money we spend blowing shit up overseas, we could have universal healthcare here at home.

"I will not send ten thousand American boys to Asia to do a job that ten thousand Asian boys should be doing themselves." --Lyndon B. Johnson

[Gandalf]

Fuck Turkey, Israel, and especially the Iraquis (nothing personal, just in the political sense). We need to stop trying to be the world's cop and quit the foreign adventures. For all the money we spend blowing shit up overseas, we could have universal healthcare here at home.

"I will not send ten thousand American boys to Asia to do a job that ten thousand Asian boys should be doing themselves." --Lyndon B. Johnson

Then shouldn't it just be "fuck the US" for massively destabilising the area through levelling Iraq?

[The Romulan Republic]

Had we not fought them when we did, I dare say we might have had to when they finished conquering Iraq and invaded Turkey, or Israel.

Fuck Turkey, Israel, and especially the Iraquis (nothing personal, just in the political sense). We need to stop trying to be the world's cop and quit the foreign adventures. For all the money we spend blowing shit up overseas, we could have universal healthcare here at home.

"I will not send ten thousand American boys to Asia to do a job that ten thousand Asian boys should be doing themselves." --Lyndon B. Johnson

There is a difference between "not being the world's police" and "throw your allies under the bus" (i.e., the Trump foreign policy).

If Daesh had finished overrunning Iraq and then headed north into Turkey, that would have been grounds for a NATO Article 5. Hell, you could probably argue that any of Daesh's various terrorist attacks on NATO countries are, if any NATO member wanted to invoke it for that.

Remember, the last (and I believe only) time Article 5 was invoked was in response to 9/11, so it certainly applies to terrorist attacks.

[Raw Shark]

Fuck Turkey, Israel, and especially the Iraquis (nothing personal, just in the political sense). We need to stop trying to be the world's cop and quit the foreign adventures. For all the money we spend blowing shit up overseas, we could have universal healthcare here at home.

"I will not send ten thousand American boys to Asia to do a job that ten thousand Asian boys should be doing themselves." --Lyndon B. Johnson

Then shouldn't it just be "fuck the US" for massively destabilising the area through levelling Iraq?

I can get on board that boat. What we need to do is unfuck ourselves. We need to stop doing this shit, and put our own house in order.

[The Romulan Republic]

To a point, yes, we need to do that.

But I don't think its an all-or-nothing, where we need to, or ought to, cut off all involvement in foreign affairs. We live in a globalized world, and going that route will come back to bite us too, and a lot of other people.

And if we are going to go that route, then we should do the honourable thing and formally withdraw from all of our foreign alliances, rather than expect our allies to be their for us, but not vice versa.

And let's not act surprised when they respond by not being their for us, building up their own militaries, setting off an arms race, while Putin or China take over the "world police" role.