Monday, November 16, 2015

After the tragedy...

Suddenly, everyone agrees on what has been bloody obvious for anyone graced with a brain cell count totaling above zero - dealing with terrorism requires an united front.

Of course, that's not going to happen. Oh, yes, we will get some sort of alliance between "our side", aka, The Good Guys (USA, UE, NATO, whatever), and "their side", aka, The Bad Guys (Russia, Iran, who else?), in order to fight The Even Worse Guys.

But, obviously, this alliance will be mined with political maneuvering from all parties, each more focused on gaining something from this situation, than on eliminating the threat.

From Russia's side, the concern about terrorism is a pretext for keeping an important ally in the Middle East, and creating some sort of leverage to keep the current Ukrainian status quo.

From "our" side... where do I begin?

The USA/EU are more concerned about making sure Russia loses its Syrian ally than about anything else.

I still maintain Ukraine is a trophy that keeps Berlin and Moscow butting heads, and I'm yet to see anything that proves me wrong.

I see our Ellected Accountants exhorting Russia to "change its strategy in Syria", all the while having friendly conversations with our Turkish "friends", who spend their time mostly bombing the Kurds, who have been the only force capable of effectively fighting ISIS right from the start. Worse, it's because of our Turkish "friends" we're not giving a higher level of support to the Kurds. That we have the gall of criticizing Russia when we have "allies" like Turkey clearly shows where our priorities lie.

Not to forget Yemen, naturally, where other "allies" of ours are carrying out a devastating bombing campaign, worse than anything the Russians have done; but that's OK, because they're on our side, and we're The Good Guys, right?

I know it might look like I'm defending Russia. Not really, though. I have no illusions about the Russian goals, here. What I never expected to say was - Yeah, the Russians are awful, but, man, when I look at our side... we're even worse...

This last decade has been extremely educational.

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