[Pearls Before Swine]

There is no rhyme or reason that a person raised in a civilized society can make of the middle east.

Nicely said.

Sometimes I think Obama pictures himself as the great Muslim unifier, so he roots for Sunni and Shia as the situations arise, unless it interferes with his immediate election needs. Syria is an unexplainable mess to me. Our threatening Russia in their backyard is writing a check we can't (and shouldn't) cash. It would as if the Russians were fooling around somewhere near the US. It's a geographically impossible situation, especially with unreliable Turkey as a key part in the logistics chain.

[Garth Tater]

Yeah, Obama is probably as messed up inside as the middle east is. We do hold some of the blame for the mess that place is in though. After WWI we drew national boundaries over there that intentionally put natural groupings of sects and clans on different sides of what to them were artificial borders. The old divide and rule routine. They hold most of the blame, but we don't have all that clean of hands ourselves.

When it comes to Syria we should just get out of the way. Syria provides Russia with a warm water port in Tartus (their only one I think) and Syria is also a Russian geo-political play to block the gas pipeline the monied arabs are trying to build from the Persian Gulf into Europe. Right now Russia has a monopoly in the European natural gas market and they are willing to fight (in Syria) to keep. Don't mess with a hungry bear unless you're willing to lose an arm. Or worse.