PUTIN RIGHT ABOUT SYRIA? AND...?

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Was Putin right about Syria?      

Article by Ishaan Tharoor,  22 August 2014    WASHINGTON POST

What a difference a year makes. Around this time last year, the West wasgearing up for military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was accused of carrying out chemical weapons attacks on his own people. That intervention never came to pass, not least because domestic public opinion in countries such as Britain and the United States was opposed to further entanglements in the Middle East.

Now, the U.S. is contemplating extending airstrikes on Islamic State militants operating in Iraq in Syria — fighters belonging to a terrorist organization that is leading the war against Assad. The Islamic State's territorial gains in Iraq and continued repression and slaughter of religious minorities there and in Syria have rightly triggered global condemnation. "I am no apologist for the Assad regime," Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, told NPR. "But in terms of our security, [the Islamic State] is by far the greatest threat."

The irony of the moment is tragic. But to some, it doesn't come as much of a surprise. Many cautioned against the earlier insistence of the Obama administration (as well as other governments) that Assad must go, fearing what would take hold in the vacuum.

One of those critics happened to be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who warned against U.S. intervention in Syria in a New York Times op-ed last September. He wrote:

A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Some of the crises Putin catalogs have worsened anyway, no matter American action or inaction. But Putin's insistence was couched in a reading of the conflict in Syria that's more cold-blooded than the view initially held by some in Washington. "Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country," Putin wrote, suggesting that the nominally secular Assad regime, despite its misdeeds, was a stabilizing force preferable to what could possibly replace it.

Putin decried the growing Islamist cadres in the Syrian rebels' ranks:

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria?

That's a concern very publicly shared now by U.S. and European officials, who are alarmed by the considerable presence of European nationals among the Islamic State's forces. A British jihadist who spoke with a London accent is believed to have carried out the shocking execution of American journalist James Foley this week.....

    The comments of Hugh Murray:  While Democrat Obama and Republicans like McCain were demanding that the US intervene on the side of the rebels, we now discover that the leading faction of those rebels has morphed into the ISIS - the fanatical Islamic State where American Foley was just beheaded before one of the cameras of the new regime there.  It is noteworthy that an influential liberal newspaper,  like the Washington Post will run such an article, but we must recall how right Putin was.  He chided Obama at the time for supporting cannibals, and there were videos of these Islamists literally eating the innards of a pro-Assad supporter.  Our leaders were urging us to support cannibals, and those who shoot heretics in the back of the head, and behead the American Foley. They wanted us to give greater support to those who now reveal themselves at the total enemy of the West and of all Civilization.  Putin was right.

   And it is time to rethink the situation in the Ukraine/East Ukraine.  Many want out of the Ukraine.  They want to rejoin Russia.  Why prevent that?That is not an ancient border; but one that fails to account the changed population of the recent era, and the loyalties of those people.  America and Europe should stay out of the quarrel, and let the Russians of East Ukraine have their freedom.  America, Russia, China, and India all have a threat in Islam.  (As well as much of Europe).  The US should join with the other 3 large nations in trying to smooth over differences and aim at the real enemy of civilization, militant Islam.