There is a war going on in Syria, and we are participating in it. That’s all that matters.
Or is it your contention that:
- There is no war in Syria.
- We are not participating in that war.
If so, please explain.
When did Russia and Syria declare war on the US?
Well, no one has declared war on anyone. Doesn’t negate the fact that fighting is taking place and that the US has, for years now, participated in that fighting.
Apparently the Iranians wanted in on the party too:
US shoots down Iranian drone in Syria
Or perhaps the Air Force didn’t want the Navy to hog all the glory.
Anyways, we’re apparently shooting down ‘all the things’ these days.
We actually shot down one a month or so ago, so this isn’t anything new.
These deconfliction areas seem to be evolving into no-fly zones by another name.
The biggest difference is that no one even knows how many sides there are or how many we are fighting with or against. So, yeah, that might “escalate”.
I don’t think we had an issue with them flying about…it’s when they drop bombs that we kind of get tense. Especially when we make the effort to wave them off and they ignore the warning.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
The biggest difference is that no one even knows how many sides there are or how many we are fighting with or against. So, yeah, that might “escalate”.
[/QUOTE]
This situation is rife for miscommunications, miscalculation and missile-aneous mischance of malicious mayhem. It’s a complete cluster fuck where the leaders of 3 of the main players are all idiots who don’t know about the whole playing with fire thingy and also want to measure dick size and see who has a lower IQ than their golf average…
Yes, don’t forget that the so-called “moderate rebels” aren’t actually a group, that just means “Any one of dozens group except ISIS”.
These groups are the ones Assad and the Russians are fighting, they might eventually decide it’s time to try to fight ISIS someday, but that’s last on the list.
Unfortunately, their purpose for ‘flying about’ is primarily to drop bombs. And we don’t mind if they drop their bombs on ISIS. We get mad when they drop them on ‘our guys’. This morning’s shoot-down of the Iranian drone seems different than the previous one, and different from the Su-22 we shot down yesterday: my understanding is that in previous cases, the aircraft we ultimately destroyed had actually dropped bombs. In this case, it sounds like it was a bit more pre-emptive. In other words, this morning’s drone hadn’t actually had a chance to drop bombs yet when we shot it down.
That’s closer to ‘them flying about’ than previous shoot-downs. Still not a blanket prohibition like a no-fly zone, but closer to that than we were yesterday, it seems.
[QUOTE=HurricaneDitka]
Unfortunately, their purpose for ‘flying about’ is primarily to drop bombs. And we don’t mind if they drop their bombs on ISIS. We get mad when they drop them on ‘our guys’. This morning’s shoot-down of the Iranian drone seems different than the previous one, and different from the Su-22 we shot down yesterday: my understanding is that in previous cases, the aircraft we ultimately destroyed had actually dropped bombs. In this case, it sounds like it was a bit more pre-emptive. In other words, this morning’s drone hadn’t actually had a chance to drop bombs yet when we shot it down.
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Well, of course, we get mad when they drop bombs on ‘our’ guys…especially this Su-22, which seems to have been dropping bombs near our actual guys (special forces observers). And of course, we don’t mind if they dropped bombs on ISIS, though they rarely do that, despite posters on this board thinking ISIS recent downward trend is due to the heroic efforts of Putin et al.
As for the one today that might be a ROE change in the new heightened environment (Putin apparently said something about US and coalition aircraft now being ‘targets’), or might just be routine wrt the last one we shot down (which was also armed but I don’t think had fired yet).
I was previously unaware of this bit about Americans being on the ground and endangered by the Su-22. That’s interesting, and better-explains the forceful response.
The article I linked to said:
It’s possible they’re wrong about the ‘dropped munitions’ part, but I have no reason to disbelieve them at present.
“Our guys” means non-ISIS rebels that we’re supporting. Whether or not there were American “advisers” mixed in is unclear. But we’re not claiming the Syrian jet was bombing American troops, we’re claiming they were bombing Syrian rebels that are our clients.
That was my understanding too. XT seemed to have different information.
I’m starting to wonder…Is the fact that Assad and the Russians are and have been fighting ISIS somehow not reported in the US?
No, not really. I was talking to some guys who (ex-military) who were talking about what would trigger a ROE allowing for a shoot down of a Syrian aircraft. They were reading between the lines in the official statements.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
“Our guys” means non-ISIS rebels that we’re supporting. Whether or not there were American “advisers” mixed in is unclear. But we’re not claiming the Syrian jet was bombing American troops, we’re claiming they were bombing Syrian rebels that are our clients.
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Generally, we don’t up the stakes by shooting down an actual manned aircraft for less than a direct threat to our own personnel. However, perhaps that’s changed. Officially we’ve been pretty vague on who all was threatened.
We just don’t get the Russian propaganda so much here, so we don’t know how heroically the Russian and Syrian militaries has been engaging fully the dread forces of ISIS. We generally hear about the majority of their strikes against helpless Syrian civilians or against other rebel forces.
The USA political class - and it seems the US corporate media - presents a pretty unique narrative about Russia; for Europe, Russia is a good trading partner. It’s not an ally but it’s not an enemy. London is brim full of thousands of Russian mill/billionaires who moved here over the last decade, they are very much part of the central London culture. Their kids go to school, etc, etc.
I guess Cuba might be a parallel - the most interesting thing about Cuba for most Europeans is it’s a great holiday destination and the people are very warm. That’s about it - no one is fighting the last century’s cold war, politics is no issue at all.
US policy on Cuba harks back to the 1950? Good luck with that.
ETA: maybe this has already been linked to about Russia fighting ISIS: Russia claims it has killed two more Isis commanders in Syria air strikes | The Independent | The Independent
Colin Kahl, on Twitter (sorry), lays out a case that this could easily get out of hand – first post in thread here: x.com
Fwiw,the whole consensus on Syria - to which the US was not invited - is to deal with ISIS first.
I guess the US makes contributions for its own reasons it’s not really in the game. Last time I paid any attention the US had even lost Turkey to the Russian strategy, and that’s a NATO Partner FFS.